October 16, 2024

by Michael R. Wickline | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

An Arkansas legislative panel on Wednesday advanced an Arkansas Department of Human Services plan to make current employees and new hires in full-time nursing positions that provide direct care at the department’s facilities — which include the state’s five human development centers, the Arkansas State Hospital, and the Arkansas Health Center — eligible for $5,000 special compensation awards.

The $5,000 lump-sum special compensation awards to full-time employees meeting the eligibility requirements would result in a one-time cost of $510,000 at the human development centers, $467,000 at the Arkansas State Hospital and $283,000 at the Arkansas Health Center, the Arkansas Department of Human Services estimated.

New hires in the full-time nursing positions that provide direct care at Arkansas Department of Human Services’s facilities will receive their $5,000 lump-sum compensation award over time, the department said in its proposal.

The Legislative Council’s personnel subcommittee voted Wednesday to recommend that the Legislative Council approve the department’s plan, after more than 20 minutes of discussion about the proposal and state government’s seven-year-old employee pay plan.

The Arkansas Department of Human Service’s special compensation award program is designed to alleviate the extensive use of expensive contract nursing staff to deliver direct care to clients at the department’s facilities through improved staff retention and attracting new nursing staff into direct care roles as well as to increase the continuity of nursing direct care for clients, the department said in its proposal.

The positions eligible for special compensation awards include nurse practitioner, Arkansas Health Center nursing director, nurse manager, associate director of nursing, nurse instructor, nursing clinical coordinator, registered nurse supervisor, registered nurse coordinator, registered nurse, registered nurse-hospital, licensed practical nurse and licensed practical nurse supervisor, according to the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

Melissa Weatherton, the department’s director of specialty Medicaid services, said the $5,000 one-time bonuses are an attempt to show appreciation and retain nurses at these facilities.

She said they represented an interim step until a proposed state employee pay plan overhaul is presented to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders later this year.

State Rep. Les Eaves, R-Searcy, said he supports the plan to offer bonuses to retain registered nurses and licensed practical nurses at state Department of Human Services’ facilities, but he wants to know how much the state Department of Human Services has spent on traveling nurses to provide care in it facilities.

In fiscal 2024 that ended June 30, Weatherton said the department spent $4.8 million on on-call nursing contracts at the Arkansas State Hospital, $3.2 million on these contracts at the Arkansas Health Center, and $3.24 million on these contracts at the state’s human development centers. He said on-call contract nurses are not used at the Booneville human development center.

Kay Barnhill, the state’s personnel administrator, said nurses are a targeted employee classification in the proposed state employee pay plan overhaul that she is working on. She said state government’s starting salary for a registered nurse is $63,830 a year.

Eaves said there is clearly a need to pay registered nurses and licensed practical nurses more at the state Department of Human Services.

Barnhill said other state agencies such as the state Department of Veterans Affairs and the state Health Department have similar problems retaining and recruiting nurses.

“I think all of them will see a nice increase,” under the proposed state pay plan overhaul that she is working on, she said. Barnhill added that the aim of the state’s pay plan overhaul is to get the state jobs appropriately matched to the market, so employees’ salaries are more competitive.

In response to a question from state Rep. Mark Berry, R-Ozark, Barnill said, “I have been locked in the basement working on the pay plan for the last two or three months.

“We are getting very close,” Barnhill continued, and she added that she intends to present a good proposal to the governor by the end of this year.

State Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, said that “we look forward to seeing a state employee pay plan.”

State Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said he’s heard concerns from parents of patients at the human development centers, who are worried about the nursing shortage potentially causing patients’ needs not to be met.

Weatherton said the one-time bonuses to retain nurses “is an interim step, but we need to focus on a longer-term solution.”

She acknowledged that she has seen nurses leave employment with the state Department of Human Services and then return to work later as contract nurses at the departments’ facilities.

Weatherton said the goal is to eliminate the need for the on-call nursing contracts and hire full-time nursing teams at the human development centers that get to know their patients well. That will result in better patient care, she said.

State government last overhauled its pay plan in 2017 under then-Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson. That plan was projected to cover 25,000 full-time state workers and cost about $57 million to implement in fiscal 2018, including about $24 million from general revenue, with the remainder coming from other revenue sources.

In June, Gov. Sanders said in a letter to state employees that “We all recognize that our state’s current pay plan is imperfect, which is why I launched the Arkansas Forward initiative and plan to approach the 2025 legislative session with an overhauled pay plan that better rewards performance and keeps us competitive in employee compensation.”

The Arkansas Forward Initiative also focuses on information technology, procurement, real estate, organizational effectiveness and vehicle assets.

In March 2023, the governor announced that she wouldn’t support a broad-based pay plan increase in the state government’s employee classification and compensation bill with an $80 million price tag that doesn’t consider the strategic needs in education, public safety, health care and corrections.

During this year’s fiscal session, the Legislature and the governor enacted Act 172 of 2024 that authorized state employees to receive “a market adjustment” of up to 3% of the employee’s base salary in fiscal 2025 that started July 1.

In June, Gov. Sanders authorized a one-time 3% market adjustment pay increase for state government’s executive branch employees that went into effect in June, and also authorized a 1% base salary merit raise for executive branch employees who have met expectations in their recent performance evaluations, and a 3% base salary merit raise for those employees who have exceeded expectations in their performance evaluations effective in July.

Act 172 of 2024 also increased the minimum salary for state employees to $32,405 a year, raised the maximum salary range for all pay grades by 10%, and authorized new incentives for future recruits and current employees who go above and beyond, either through a lump-sum payment or through extra hours of paid leave.

In other action on Wednesday, the Legislative Council’s personnel subcommittee voted to recommend that the Legislative Council approve the state Department of Agriculture’s special compensation and recruitment incentive plan.

The special compensation plan is due to increases in employee workload resulting from a significant increase in water and wastewater projects being administered by the department, state Department of Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward said in a letter to Barnhill.

He said 25 employees in various positions have been identified as being eligible to receive incentive pay of a lump-sum bonus of $5,000 or 40 hours of additional leave time. The awards will be based on the number of active water and wastewater projects being administered and employees will only be considered for incentive pay when their case load exceeds 45 cases, he said.

Ward said the total maximum cost to the department would be about $170,000 a year for the $5,000 lump-sum bonuses, but the total maximum cost to the department would be about about $44,522 a year for the 40 hours of additional leave time.

The department wants to offer up to a $5,000 recruitment incentive to new hires, outside of current state employment, for an engineer supervisor position and professional engineer positions, he said. The department currently has nine engineer positions, and three of the positions are vacant, he said.

Ward said the department is having an extremely hard time recruiting to fill these positions and is competing with the private sector that can pay more than the state. He said engineers are critical to expedite the completion of water projects and assist with the state water plan as directed by the governor.

The personnel subcommittee on Wednesday also recommended that the Legislative Council approve Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System’s plan to offer a $5,000 recruitment incentive for an accountant position and an investment specialist position.

Barnhill said the system has advertised the accountant position with a starting salary of about $45,000 a year seven times.

State government’s executive branch has 22,546 active full-time employees and their combined average salary is about $52,886 a year, according to the state Department of Transformation and Shared Services.

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