RALEIGH – Decisions about compensating government employees shouldn’t be made on political considerations. They should flow naturally from setting proper priorities. I don’t see much in the way of serious discussion of such issues as lawmakers and lobbies seek to divvy up a big surplus in the state budget this year.
Gov. Mike Easley proposed an 8 percent average increase in teacher pay for the 2006-07 fiscal year, vs. 4 percent for other state employees. The teacher lobby, the North Carolina Association of Educators, is ecstatic. The State Employees Association of NC isn’t. While 4 percent would be a more generous raise than they have seen in many years, it galls them that teachers will get twice as much, particularly since teachers fared better during the lean years.
I have no doubt that the resulting legislative tussle will center largely on perceptions of political heft. Will the majority Democrats feel so beholden to NCAE that they must shell out the 8 percent? Do they perceive state employee support to be so much less significant, or insufficiently loyal? Alternatively, do they worry that disaffected employees may vote for GOP candidates in the fall, or just stay at home?
My guess is that the General Assembly will feel compelled to even things up a bit. But it won’t be a decision based on sound public policy principles, which is regrettable.
Here’s the theory: the citizens of North Carolina elect representatives to decide on their behalf how much of their hard-earned money will be confiscated in taxes and spent on basic public services that cannot be accomplished through private, voluntary means. These representatives base their decisions on core principles and sound information. They don’t pay employees in order to make the employees happy or reward them for political service. They pay the employees because doing so serves the interests of the taxpayers – it results in safer communities, adequate streets, and other public goods. Compensation is a tool for attracting the quality and quantity of labor required to produce these public goods.
Unfortunately, the reality is far different. Before deciding how much employees will be paid, or how much their compensation will increase, one should first decide whether the tasks they are performing are core government services. Then one must evaluate whether the current employees are performing them well, whether upping the pay for particular jobs would retain valued workers or attract better-qualified applicants, and whether across-the-board raises are required to maintain workforce quality against competing employers and inflationary pressures.
That’s not the process evident in the General Assembly. State law and custom vitiate against differentiated pay. Lawmakers tend to view groups of workers as interests to be mollified, not as assets to be protected (or discarded and replaced). Even in lean times, and certainly not in surplus years like 2006, lawmakers tend not to be interested in setting firm budgetary priorities – eliminating some programs and positions altogether while giving others substantial increases in resources so they can accomplish their important tasks.
Given the parameters of the current debate on state compensation, I’m firmly in the SEANC camp. Given both groups of workers a reasonable, equivalent cost-of-living adjustment. But I’d prefer to expand the parameters. Some state employees may well deserve changes in compensation in the range of 100 percent – plus or minus.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.