November 12, 2024

by Michael R. Wickline | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday proposed an overhaul of the state’s pay plan for more than 22,000 executive branch employees with a projected price tag of about $102 million a year.

The Republican governor said the proposed pay plan overhaul would bring executive branch employees’ salary levels up to labor market rates, consolidate job titles and create career tracks.

The proposed pay plan would raise salaries for 14,539 executive branch employees — about two-thirds of the Cabinet agencies’ workforce — and the proposed pay increases are intended to bring these state employees up to comparable private labor market rates and are targeted toward employment areas facing chronic shortages, including correctional officers, family service workers, Arkansas State Police troopers, and nurses, according to the governor’s office.

The other third of the executive branch employees are paid up to labor market rates, said Leslie Fisken, secretary of the state Department of Transformation and Shared Services.

The average salary for 22,343 executive branch employees would increase from $53,784 to $58,362 per year under the proposed pay plan overhaul, effective July 1, according to a state official.

Nearly $60 million of the about $102 million cost of the proposed overhaul of the state employee pay plan overhaul would be paid out of state general revenue and the remainder from other state government revenue sources, according to the governor’s office.

“We are first asking [the Cabinet secretaries] to look at their existing budgets and to pay for the vast majority through the existing budget that they already have,” Sanders said during a news conference in the governor’s conference room.

“If that is not possible, then we would look at other funding sources,” she said. “One example, but not exclusive to, would be the performance fund, which has an extremely healthy balance around $72 million. But the first step and the first place that we want every agency and department to look at is within their existing budget.”

Sanders initially said there would be no new money specifically included in her proposed general revenue budget for fiscal 2026 for the proposed pay plan overhaul.

But Sanders spokesman Sam Dubke said later in a written statement that “While the vast majority of the funding for the updated pay plan will come from existing funding streams, a small portion of the overall cost will be reflected in an increase in the Performance Fund that will be included in the Governor’s balanced budget presented next week.”

The governor’s proposed general revenue budget for fiscal 2026 is to be presented to the Arkansas Legislative Council and Joint Budget Committee on Nov. 21. Fiscal year 2026 begins July 1, 2025, and ends June 30, 2026.

State government last overhauled its executive branch pay plan in 2017 under then-Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson. That plan was projected to cover 25,000 full-time state workers and cost a total of $57 million to implement in fiscal 2018.

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

At her news conference on Tuesday, the governor said that “when I took office [in January 2023] I promised to offer transformational change for the state of Arkansas.

“We are achieving that in education, in public safety, in our tax code and a lot more, and today we are announcing another slate of reforms, this time for state government itself,” she said.

The governor said the state’s current state employee pay plan is broken and confusing, and it does not reward hard work and does not recruit new hires for the state government’s most in-demand positions.

“We took Arkansas’ pay plan down to the studs so there is a lot to unpack,” she said. “I look forward to working with our legislators to get this plan passed.”

The state Legislature will consider the proposed pay plan overhaul during the 95th General Assembly’s regular session that is scheduled to start on Jan. 13.

John Bridges, executive director of the Arkansas State Employees Association, on Tuesday praised the governor’s proposed pay plan overhaul.

“This investment is much needed to recognize and retain our great state employees and to attract qualified candidates,” he said in the governor’s news release.

“Creating career paths, increasing the ability to react to changing labor market rates, and investing more in high performing employees are innovations much needed in state government,” Bridges said. “We look forward to working with the members of the Arkansas General Assembly to the ensure its passage.”

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said in an interview that “I like the fact that everything that they did was market driven and data driven.

“That’s important and probably missing from some of the last pay plan adjustments that we have made, especially big overhauls,” he said.

Dismang, who is a co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, said “I think she is right in asking the agencies to try to find the savings” to implement the proposed pay plan overhaul.

He said it’s a possibility that new money will have to be included in the state’s general revenue budget for the proposed state employee pay plan overhaul in fiscal 2026.

According to the governor’s office, the governor’s proposed pay plan overhaul would, among other things:

Increase average entry-level salaries for correctional officers from $37,589 to $50,845 a year, and increase average salaries for correctional officers from $50,461 to $59,100 a year.

Increase average entry-level salaries for state Department of Human Services family service workers, from $44,172 to $52,442 a year, and increase average salaries for family service workers from $48,733 to $55,364 a year.

Increase average entry-level salaries for Arkansas State Police troopers from $56,498 to $67,706 a year, and increase average salaries for Arkansas State Police troopers from $73,318 to $80,930. In March of 2022, then-Gov. Hutchinson signed into law legislation that increased the starting salary for state troopers from $42,357 to $54,000 a year, making Arkansas’ law enforcement salaries more regionally competitive.

Increase average entry-level salaries for nurses $51,032 to $54,661 a year, and increase average salaries for nurses from $57,686 to $61,552 a year.

Under the proposed pay plan, Dakota Moore, a licensed practical nurse from DeQueen, would get a pay increase from $40,674 to $53,558 a year, according to the governor’s office.

In addition to working at the state Department of Health, Sanders said Moore still works at a nursing home on the weekend to make ends meet and that means she can’t spend as much time with their children as she would like.

Under the proposed pay plan, Santresa Jackson, a family service worker from Conway, would get a pay increase from $44,683 to $52,137 a year, according to the governor’s office.

Sanders said Jackson works at the Conway Human Development Center and is a single mother with two boys who has had prices go up while her salary has stayed the same and she says “a pay bump would help with just about everything.”

Under the proposed pay plan, the salary for Blake Irvin, a state trooper from Wynne, would increase from $56,837 to $67,675 a year, according to the governor’s office.

Sanders said Irvin is a foster parent, and he and his wife lost their home in a tornado last year. The couple has had difficulty with their insurance company and recently moved back into an old house and money has become an issue, she said.

Irvin said that “Obviously, this pay raise would do wonders financially for us.”

In addition, he said the governor’s proposed pay overhaul would help the Arkansas State Police recruit some law enforcement officers to fill vacant state trooper positions, “and I believe that maybe what is holding some people back from making that jump over to the state police.”

The governor’s proposed pay plan overhaul would consolidates about 2,200 current job titles into about 800 proposed job titles that match their equivalent in the private labor force, according to the governor’s office.

It also expands the number of employee pay tables from four to six by adding law enforcement and safety and professional pay tables, the governor’s office said. The state already has employee pay tables for medical, information systems and technology, state general services, and executive employees.

According to the governor’s office, this proposed pay plan offers state employees a clear career track from the outset of their time in state government, and encourages employees to seek training for additional skills and certification by establishing skills-based – rather than degree-based – career tracks.

The state received recommendations last summer from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and the state Office of Personnel Management collected labor market data to devise new job titles and bring employees up to private sector pay, according to the governor’s office.

The proposed pay plan is part of the governor’s broader Arkansas Forward initiative, which aims to improve efficiency in state government while delivering a better quality of service to the people of Arkansas. Besides the proposed state employee pay plan, the Arkansas Forward Initiative also focuses on information technology, procurement, real estate, organizational effectiveness and vehicle assets.

In February, the Legislative Council signed off on the state Department of Transformation and Shared Service’s consulting contract with McKinsey & Co. for up to $5.5 million to help the state’s 15 executive branch agencies become more efficient and improve services.

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