Rick Green
The Oklahoman
Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman has given $217,655 in pay raises to Senate employees.
A total of 90 employees, including executive assistants to Oklahoma senators, will get performance-based increases this month averaging 4 percent.
The biggest raise was 7 percent; the lowest was 1 percent.
The money for the raises comes from cost savings. The Senate had 139 employees in 2008 and has 108 now.
“We are choosing to use the savings achieved through attrition and efficiencies to provide a number of our hard-working employees with reasonable raises,” said Bingman, R-Sapulpa.
“Rather than adding new employees every time we have a departure from staff, we are choosing to consolidate responsibilities and improve salaries.”
He said he wants to give valuable employees an incentive to stay.
The last round of salary increases in the Senate was in 2012 for about 35 employees.
The last round of salary adjustments for executive assistants was in January 2006. Their salary range is $45,652 to $70,774.
Randy Dowell, chief operating officer for the Senate, has the highest salary. His 7 percent raise brings his annual pay to $131,664.
In addition to executive assistants, the Senate staff includes researchers, attorneys and bill drafters.
The Legislature approved salary adjustments of 5 percent to 13.5 percent for more than 12,000 state employees last session, but Senate employees and many other state workers were not included.
I’m sure some will scream at staffers getting anything, but you need good people in these positions. More interesting, however, is the statement that they are getting “performance-based” increases, ranging from 1% to 7%.
That’s as it should be. If you perform well, you should be rewarded well.
Of course, that doesn’t register in the wonderland of public education, where the worst teacher in the school gets paid as well as the best teacher in the school, assuming equal time in the job. Madness. But watch them holler for raises for teachers, regardless of quality.
Castor, you are absolutely right – this action will cause a lot of people to wonder how much more governmental BS will pop up in light of all the other fiscal problems.