The silver lining for Gov. Bobby
Jindal having the misfortune to govern through a period where subpar
policy decisions at the national level have caused economic malaise that eroded
Louisiana’s finances is that he could use this to spur policy innovation to
make state government more efficient. Having worked out this way in health care
and corrections, to name two major areas, this may be extended to classified personnel
pay policy.
In the past few years, Jindal has
spurred changes to better
align health care resources to needs, to make
Medicaid work better, and to get
the state largely out of the business of direct health care provision,
savings hundreds of millions of dollars annually as a result. More has been
saved by introducing
operating efficiencies into the prison system through technology and
judicious closings. While it may be that the atmosphere of fiscal difficulties
prodded him to seek these aggressively, that he did so indicates his natural
inclinations led him.
But one area where he found
himself mostly unsuccessful was in civil service pay reform, especially in
tying pay to performance of classified employees. His most far-reaching
proposals ended up getting watered down by the State
Civil Service Commission, which would have included such a measure.
Presently, the norm for departments in giving pay raises of 4 percent to
whomever does not get rated as “unsatisfactory” – which ends up, in a figure
hardly changed over the years even after the most recent reforms – at 1
percent or less of the total.
That is, when a normal (that is,
not tied to a promotion, meeting certain job-related criteria, etc.) raise
actually is funded to occur. This has been hit-or-miss over the past few years,
with few agencies able to grant them because their funding has not been
appropriated in the last few budgets. However, agencies have discretionary authority
within their overall budgets that if they produce savings in other areas they
can give raises or bonuses, and while only a few instances of that occurred
before last year, this year a number
of them have been able to parlay that into full 4 percent raises for the
roughly 99 percent of their employees deemed to have performed at a
satisfactory level.
Yet in one instance, that of the
Department of Revenue, it argued
in front of the SCSC, which must approve of all pay raises not given at 4
percent (technically, all employees rated in all but the lowest category
automatically receive raises of 4 percent annually on Oct. 1, but agencies that
can’t do that must explain why not and seek approval), that it could afford to
give only those rated “exceptional” the full amount while those rated “successful”
would receive just a 2 percent bump. Further, they would be one-time bonuses. This
halfway replicates what Jindal had sought, which would have allowed agencies to
grant permanent higher raises to better-performing employees. Without
objection, including the representative of state classified employees, the SCSC
approved.
This set a significant precedent.
The next step would be to transfer this to permanent increases. While this
would not have the same effect as that originally sought by Jindal, because it
would work only when agencies were asking for exceptions and would not be across-the-board,
it does move closer and makes it politically easier to implement that policy
for all situations for all agencies automatically in the future.
Whether Jindal scaled back his
initial idea of tying pay to performance because he felt only an incremental
change would be accepted or because he figured Pres. Barack Obama
would continue to make policy that would dampen the national economy and therefore
the state’s to moot any discussion of budgeted raises, or both, following the
course he did now has produced a small victory. Whether he or his successor
will try to capitalize on this momentum is another matter, but this could
result in substantial savings for taxpayers. Based on Revenue’s distribution of
evaluation scores (53.56 percent in the middle category) and the average
classified state employee salary at present employment numbers, by paying
the middle category only 2 percent raises that would save annually (without
factoring compounding effects of future years) about $23 million and produce a
more efficient workforce, knowing its remuneration now will be based on finer
performance gradients.
ReplyDeleteNot mentioned: Jindal's dismal failure as the CEO/Manager who has given us five consecutive years of mid-year budget cuts (want to bet on a sixth?) and who cannot provide sufficient budget authority for rank-and-file state workers to keep up with the rising cost of their benefits, not to mention other costs (in fact, he has tried and tried to additionally increase some of these costs at the same time, especially retirement).
Blame it all on the Feds and Obama - who can believe that?