Legislators boost staff salaries

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 25, 2008 | by Bob Bernick Jr. Deseret News

The Utah House and Senate, run by Republicans, have been frugal in their own spending the past seven years, keeping their individual budgets well below the growth seen overall in state government.

But many individual legislative staffers -- and especially two of the Legislature's own staff departments -- have received big raises and/or seen significant spending increases of taxpayer cash, an analysis by the Deseret News shows.

The Legislature, including the House, the Senate, and their three main staff departments, has increased its overall budget by 49 percent over the past seven years.

In comparison to legislative spending on its own staffs, the state's two main non-transportation funds -- the General Fund and the Education Fund -- have also increased by 49 percent over the same time.

Both Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and GOP legislators hope to benefit this election year from a state Republican Party's public relations campaign (the "I Can" campaign) that touts Utah state government as being well-managed by GOP officeholders, so budget growth may well be a campaign issue.

But the Legislature's spending on itself only matches the state's budget growth because of lower-than-average spending by the House and Senate themselves. That includes the 29 senators and four or five full-time Senate staffers and the 75-member House and a similarly small staff. The House's internal budget grew by just 34 percent over seven years; the Senate's by just 28 percent. Legislative leaders have actually cut the House and Senate travel budet over the last seven years.

However, the newspaper's analysis, based on budgets and staff salaries obtained through the state's open records law, found that some legislative staffers' pay has far exceeded what most executive branch employees and managers are seeing, even outstripping the wage growth of average Utahns.

In addition, two legislative staff departments have outpaced general government growth.

The Office of Legislative Auditor General's budget grew by an astounding 80 percent over the past seven years. The Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel's budget grew by nearly 62 percent, figures show.

More auditors needed

House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said legislative leaders made a conscious decision several years ago to hire more legislative auditors. "These audits save taxpayer dollars, because we find out how we can manage (the executive and judicial branches of government) better. Audits were backing up (not being finished in a timely manner), and we couldn't do the number of audits that were requested" by lawmakers.

Legislative auditor general John Schaff said he hired three additional auditors and one staff support person, reorganized the office, giving promotions to several people, and last year turned out 22 audits compared to 17 several years ago.

Mike Christensen, head of Legislative Research and General Counsel, said his budget is up because he hired five new employees over the past few years to deal with a greater workload.

The other main legislative office -- the Fiscal Analyst, which drafts the state's budget -- grew by 49 percent over that time frame -- the same growth as the executive branch's main tax funds.

A review of salaries shows that legislative leaders and managers recently gave selected staffers pay raises that are double what the average Utahn was seeing, double what the average executive branch worker saw. Some legislative staffers got two or three raises in fiscal 2008 alone, which ended June 30, the documents show, while other staffers got raises that reflect what Utahns and other state employees averaged.

Legislative staffers who got the higher raises were reclassified, got wide-spread promotions or received pay in other adjustments, records show. The Legislature sets its own personnel pay scales, which are not administered by the executive branch's Department of Human Resource Management.

According to the state's Workforce Services economists, Utah wages overall grew by 4.6 percent from July 2007 to June 2008, the state's last fiscal year. Utah wages grew about 18.8 percent over the last four fiscal years, those economists say.

In the same fiscal years, state executive branch workers averaged pay raises (with promotions included) of 4.39 percent in FY 2005, 3.79 percent in FY 2006, 4.92 percent in FY 2007 and 4.44 percent in FY 2008, which ended June 30. Over four years, the average state executive branch worker has seen a pay raise of 17.5 percent, statistics provided by the state human resource office shows.

Some exceptions

With those numbers in mind, here are a few examples of some of the larger, or just odd, pay raises and pay scales in the Utah Legislature:

-- Over the past year, Chris Bleak, the House chief of staff (the House's top political appointee,) has seen his salary go up 8.8 percent to $109,000. Over the same time, Ric Cantrell, the deputy of the Senate (the Senate's top political appointee), was given a raise of only 3.5 percent to $99,028.

Over the three years that Bleak has worked as House chief of staff his pay has gone from $88,438 to $109,000, or a 23 percent pay hike. Cantrell has received one big promotion -- from an administrative assistant to deputy of the Senate, and over four years has seen his salary go from $45,000 a year to $99,028, a 110 percent increase. But he still gets a lower salary than Bleak.