The state's top highway official said Wednesday that his agency will monitor the effectiveness of higher staffing levels for a few months before deciding whether more employees would be needed.
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Scott Bennett, the director of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, told state legislators who were reviewing the agency's budget for the next two fiscal years that the agency's maintenance crews still wouldn't be fully staffed with recently approved additional employees.
But he didn't think the department could hire more because in some places around the state it is difficult to find people to fill the mostly entry-level jobs.
"This was about all the market would bear," he said.
The review won't occur until 89 new employees previously announced are hired, Bennett said.
The new employees, once they are all hired, would push the agency's total employment to nearly 3,700, which Bennett said remained well below the nearly 4,000 people the department once employed.
State Rep. Jim Nickels, D-Hot Springs, a member of the Joint Budget Committee, asked Bennett if adding employees was the department's answer to its lack of a robust response to a winter storm that pummeled eastern Arkansas with snow, ice and sleet that ground traffic to a halt for days on major roadways.
"Yes, sir, it sure was," Bennett said. "I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back."
For years, in the name of efficiency, he said, the department has kept its employment levels down, leaving its maintenance crews at 85 percent staffing levels. The additional employees will bring maintenance crew levels to 90 percent of recommended size, according to Bennett.
It was part of an overall effort to focus resources on road and bridge construction. But that focus has come at a cost in other areas.
"We love to build," Bennett said. "But we need to maintain."
The department also plans to acquire 12 more belly-plow trucks with its existing budget to augment the six belly-plow trucks the state already has.
Arkansas Highway Department trucks can be outfitted only with front-end plows, which are less-effective in clearing roadways than belly-plow trucks designed to use the weight of the truck to more effectively scrape ice from the roadways.
Belly-plow trucks typically cost about $170,000 versus $120,000 for the regular dump trucks. Both types can be used for maintenance work at other times of the year. Arkansas has about 360 conventional front-end plows spread among the state's 75 counties.
Bennett said the extra personnel will pay off year round. And what new employees the department has hired already have paid dividends, he said.
The department's district engineers have reported that "over the last several months, we've been able to lay more asphalt than they have in recent memory," Bennett said.
The department is requesting a 2015-16 appropriation totaling $2.5 billion and a 2016-17 appropriation totaling $2.6 billion. The authorized appropriation for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, is $2.2 billion.
The proposed regular salary appropriation in the next two years is $188 million and $189 million respectively, which will accommodate the extra employees and an anticipated 1 percent cost of living raises for all employees. The agency is authorized for salary appropriations totaling $181.8 million in the current fiscal year.
The proposed appropriations for overtime in each of the next two years would increase by $2 million to $9 million -- $18 million total over two years -- which would accommodate the additional 89 employees and better allow the agency to respond to winter storms.
The committee approved the department's budget request, which is the first step in a process that will culminate during the regular legislative session that opens in January.
But Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, said he is "flagging" the budget request while the department addresses his concerns on several issues, including the number of black employees in high-level positions at the agency. Of the department's five division chiefs, one is black. But Walker said he wants a wider accounting of the percentage of black people in supervisory positions at the agency.
"Flagging" the department's budget request will allow it to be drafted into bill form, but it won't be able to advance in the session until the agency reaches an accommodation with Walker or Walker decides to drop his "flag."
Walker is the attorney for the department's former chief counsel, Robert Wilson, who is suing the department over claims of racial discrimination in his 2011 dismissal. Wilson is black.
Metro on 10/23/2014