State of Delaware employees are feeling the effects of a seriously eroding salary caused by years of underfunding by multiple administrations. Our legislature needs to step in and put a plan in place to help workers regain a fair and competitive wage, based on the value they bring to their jobs.
For the first time in my memory, agencies openly expressed their concerns at the Joint Finance Committee hearings about their ability to maintain proper staff levels in their organizations. Employee attrition and the inability to attract new employees at current salary levels are impacting their ability to meet the needs of Delaware citizens.
Gov. John Carney’s proposed budget includes some creative raises for lower-paid jobs, but it doesn’t address the ongoing underlying problem for all employees. In announcing his budget, Gov. Carney expressed his concern and said, “State employee compensation needs to get more competitive.” He recently installed Claire DeMatteis as the new secretary of the Department of Human Resources, with the express goal of improving state employee recruitment and retention. This is great, but these problems need immediate attention.
Our legislature addressed a similar problem with the top earners in their last session, when the Delaware Compensation Committee presented the legislature with a convincing case to warrant a large increase for top-level employees. The proposed increases seemed more than justified when considering the many years where the state fell short on giving employees raises to stay even (or even close) with the increases in the cost of living. The courts estimated the accumulated cost-of-living number to be 29% since 2005, and their suggested increase is much less than that. The legislature supported a large increase for those at the top. To me, that suggested increase did not seem out of line.
Based on that committee’s extensive review (along with outside experts), most of the top earners in our state government (the top earner in the state is Mark Brainard at Delaware Technical Community College, who was not included, as he is handled by an outside board) were scheduled for significant raises of more than 10%, with the chief justice getting the most with $30,000 over three years.
The facts presented by that committee also apply to all state workers. When you couple the compensation shortfall caused by a 29% cost-of-living increase since 2005 with last year’s additional COLA of 5.9% (the highest in 40 years) and the current raging inflation at 8.5%, state employees and their families are feeling the pinch.
While there may be cynics saying state employees don’t deserve any raises, I have found most state employees to be caring, professional, hard-working and certainly deserving of fair compensation based on their job responsibilities and performance.
I am hopeful that our legislators will give the same support to the other state workers that they gave to the top earners last year. A commitment of a 10% raise over the next three years seems justified. This problem is real and not going away without the legislature’s making it happen!
Bill Bowden is a retired Verizon Delaware executive and past president of the Delaware Quality Award. He served for eight years as the executive director of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information. He resides in Ocean View.
