
A survey of salaries for various state government jobs indicates that it is high time for Kansas lawmakers to award raises to several categories of public employees.
Kansas is underpaying workers in most of the more than 100 job classifications in this year’s market survey, according to data presented to a legislative committee last month. The revelation comes after lawmakers earmarked $225 million to raise salaries this fiscal year.
“The sweet spot is really that you’d like to be within 5% of the market somehow,” said Kraig Knowlton, director of the Office of Personnel Services. “It indicates that if you’re just 5% below you’re within reach, you’re probably competitive and it doesn’t take much to get there. If you’re a little above that’s fine, you’re just a little ahead of the curve.
“Another thing that, and sometimes it’s hard to get people to understand this, is that it’s not always a bad thing to be above the market. It basically means that that particular benchmark, a priority was placed there and that we do better in comparison to our competitors for this particular position.”
But Kansas pays several rankings well below 5% less than its competitors.
State government lawyers are paid 32% below their peers, accountants are paid 24% below market, administrative officers and senior equipment mechanics are 21% below, social workers 20% below, driver’s license examiners and epidemiologists are 19% below, among others.
Meanwhile, job classes paying above market rates include Kansas Highway Patrol master troopers 30% above market, Capitol area guardsmen 27% above their peers, economic development representatives 17% above, graphic designers 16% above and database administrators 14% above.
After:Workers’ pay is worth less due to inflation this Labor Day as businesses struggle to find employees
Knowlton said Kansas has nearly 350 classified job categories, plus about double that number in unclassified job titles. Officials investigate about one-third of job categories each year. The 2022 survey, with data collected in July, has more than 100 jobs used as benchmarks to compare state government salaries to public and private sector jobs in Kansas and government jobs in neighboring states.
The state sent out surveys to hundreds of employers, but only about 25% responded. Knowlton said it is difficult to get information from the private sector to compare executive-level and management-level jobs. Some industries are also less likely to participate, such as engineering.
Their survey uses intermediate levels of tiered jobs and the base average hourly rate. It does not show the entry salary for new hires or the upper ends of salary ranges for more experienced employees.
Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, suggested that more emphasis should be placed on increasing pay for lower-paying positions.
“The smaller increases for some of the lower level salaries definitely have a bigger impact on retention,” Knowlton said. “Because frankly, that means more to someone going from $10 to $12 an hour than it does to someone going from $30 to $31 or $31.50. … The 5% s applied to everyone, so it was as equal as possible, but there are some groups where a targeted increase would be more meaningful than others.”
Legislators and board members could also see their compensation increased.
Knowlton suggested a general increase in per diems or rates because the dollar amounts have not been increased for some time. The per diem is $35, with other compensation available for some council members.
“It’s hard to get people to come and want to do this,” he said. “So I think any increase in the baseline at least would be welcome from any agency that has boards and commissions.”
About $1.5 million is budgeted for per diems for board members this year.
After:Kansas businesses are understaffed. What can the state government do to help?
Kansas public employees got raises this year
Prior to this year, the last time Kansas adjusted the salaries of constitutional officers, other than judges, was in 2009, said Dylan Dear, chief tax analyst with the Kansas Legislative Research Department.
For fiscal year 2023, which began in July and ends in June, the Legislative Assembly added approximately $145 million to the budget to implement a 5% base salary increase for most employees. Excluded are legislators and other categories of employees who were covered by separate salary increases, some of more than 5%.
At the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, $3.6 million was used to pay increases of between about 13% and about 19% for officers and 11% for medical examiners. At the Kansas Department of Children and Families, $3.7 million is funding salary increases for protection specialists ranging from about 3% to about 13%. The Kansas Department of Corrections and state hospitals are receiving about $57 million to continue wage increases originally funded by federal COVID-19 assistance.
After:Kansas Governor Says Corrections, State Hospital Staff Will See Salary Increases Despite Staffing Shortages
These and other salary adjustments brought the total incremental spending for salary increases in fiscal year 2023 to $225 million.
The State budget authorizes approximately 41,700 full-time equivalent positions for the current financial year, an increase of nearly 400 FTE positions. Most of the increase is due to additional staff at state prisons and hospitals, as well as more jobs in the justice system, more staff at the Department of Labor and additional positions at the University. of Wichita State.
Of the roughly $145 million budgeted for 5% pay raises, only about $120 million was used due to vacancies, mostly at state prisons, hospitals and social service agencies. The largest recipients were state universities, with $36 million combined for the University of Kansas and KU Medical Center, $20 million combined for Kansas State University and K-State Research and Extension, and $9 million for dollars for Wichita State.
Should government employee raises be performance-based?
Representative Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill and the committee chair, said he would prefer future pay increases to be performance-based and not an overall increase. He said it would be an incentive for employees to improve their work performance.
“If you’re in the private sector, it’s based on your work and your performance,” he said. “But when we’re talking about state government, we’re just giving everyone 5% coverage. Is there a way to leave that discretion to agencies and departments to decide based on their work and their performance that those good employees get a pay raise and the underperforming ones don’t?”
“That’s actually one of the questions that this committee was tasked with answering and how do you go about implementing this kind of thing,” Dear said.
He added that agency heads already have this discretion for unclassified employees, but it “gets much more complicated” for classified employees. A performance requirement for this year’s pay raises was part of the House Appropriations Committee’s original motion, Dear said.
After:Survey shows Kansans optimistic despite economic concerns. How will this affect the governor’s race?
Unclassified employees work “at will” and can be terminated at any time, while classified employees benefit from civil service protections and established policies on hiring, promotions, benefits and other personnel matters. The state government moved more of its workforce to unclassified status.
Kansas currently has 4,400 classified employees and 14,180 unclassified employees in the executive branch, excluding higher education, Knowlton said.
“For unclassified employees, that’s basically what you have right now,” Knowlton said of performance-based pay. “…For classified employees, there is essentially no mechanism in the regulations to distinguish between someone getting a better performance rating than someone else.”
The Special Commission for the Remuneration of State Agents and Administrators was authorized to meet three times between May and January, but met only once. Waymaster said he plans to schedule a second committee meeting, but not a third.
Waymaster said he would like to have additional information broken down by department to help decide whether salary increases are warranted when the committees work on the budget for the next session.
The governor will not release his budget proposal until January. The new tax revenue forecast calls for a budget surplus of $2.3 billion at the end of the fiscal year, so public servants have money to work with if they choose to raise pay.
Newly elected House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said he expects legislation next session to increase salaries for lawmakers and state officials, “but we’ll see how it will happen”.