I am sitting in a joint budget committee right now, where Commissioner Goetz is presenting a lot of the details about the governor’s revised budget. So far, the employee buyouts and the lack of a salary increase are not going over incredibly well.
Rep. Nathan Vaughn is taking issue with the 3100 vacant positions that the state is going to continue to fund, while asking for 2000 buyouts and no salary increases. He referred back to last year’s big salary increases for department top dogs, saying “In the the good times we compensate the people at the top, in the bad times we punish the people on the bottom”.
AMEN! That always seems to be the way. We heard about the directors who got huge raises last year while the rest of us are not getting squat. Not even the final phase of the compression raise that we were supposed to get. I’m not entirely sure why this wasn’t built into the budget for this year, but it wasn’t. Yet, the directors are sitting pretty with some pulling down a cool 6 figure salary.