Kentucky Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on January 2, 2007

Click here to view bill details.

Many people outside of state government don't understand that many of us, especially those in professional positions within the state gave up a LOT of salary early in our careers knowing that getting a 5% increase every, or at least most every year would partially make up for it several years down the road. When that increae is taken away, it puts us even further behind the salary curve, especially those who have too much vested time to make it practicle to change employers. It also hurts our retirement which is one of the few things left in state government that remains a good...well, decent benefit at least. Not only did they take away the 5%, but they also made it much harder for deserving employees to get special recognition awards, which is a way for hard working and very valuable state employees to get raises outside of the annual 5%. I hope things get back on track.

I recommend that they match inflation. And then they bring back the awards you mentioned (for working hard) as well. That's how the real business world works. Usually this is 3%. Sometimes 4%. I understand your concern. But as a taxpayer, I also worry about overpaying for state services as a result of some arbitrary system of raises.

Believe me, I understand your concern. I don't have a problem with decreasing the size of state governement by not replacing retiring employees (of which there have been MANY in the past several months and many in the near future), requiring more from those that are left and using some of the money saved through attrition to raise salaries. You can get the best of both worlds, an overall savings while restoring salary increases. I think many offices/departments have more employees than they really need and this could work. As I stated before, many of us, especially in professional postitons started far below market value and made sacrifices early in our careers, knowing that in the long run if we stuck it out, though we would never make it up, it would get better with a pretty decent retirement at the end. You mentioned raising by inflation. What about when inflation went up less than 2%, which I believe has happened quite often the past several years? You could never retain good employees if that was the case, and the lack of a decent starting salary would never come close to being made up on the back end. I will never make anywhere near the salary of those in my profession in private industry, nor do I expect to working with state government, and that is a choice I and many others have made. There are some benefits with working for state government over working in private industry, so it's not all negative, and I hope to not come across in than manner. However, many of us do depend on that 5% to get us somewhere close to a decent salary later in our careers, and I wanted to shed some light on that.

You bring up several good, valid points, and in a rational manner. Thank you. I think that most people are at least satisfied to be keeping up with inflation, provided they don't absolutely hate their job. My former employer gave no raise in 2003, a 1% raise in 2004, and again, no raise in 2005. As a result, I bailed in October 2005. And the company gave decent raises in 2006, after my departure, as there would have been a massive amount of turnover, had they not. I do know that the state pays less than most private sector positions, but it was my understanding that the state health and retirement benefits were better as well. Also, I thought that a state employee could retire much earlier than people in the private sector. I know this is the case in many other states, as I've done work for their state offices. I've never done work with the state of Kentucky, so I'm unsure how it works out. I guess my main concern is that the state seems to pay people regardless of performance. I wish there was a better way to fairly compensate state employees.