A subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council voted Wednesday to give state government attorneys a raise in the hopes of stemming a high turnover rate.
The raises are a first step for state attorneys, Kay Barnhill, state personnel administrator, told lawmakers on the Uniform Personnel Classification and Compensation Plan Subcommittee.
"I think this will help address the current issues," she said. "We can hire attorneys out of law school almost all day long, but once they get the specialized knowledge -- where they're really of value to the agency that employs them -- they're leaving."
In a letter to lawmakers, Barnhill said her office studied attorneys in the Department of Finance and Administration, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Environmental Quality and the Public Defender Commission over the past year.
The 318 authorized attorney positions turned over 237 times, resulting in a turnover rate of about 75 percent, according to the letter.
For employees who fall below labor market rates of pay, lawmakers voted to increase salaries to those rates or by 8 percent, whichever is greater. Attorneys above labor market rates will receive an 8 percent raise annually.
The labor market rate for an attorney is $50,847 a year, Barnhill wrote. More specialized attorneys, administrative law judges, general counsel and public defenders have a higher rate. For example, an attorney specialist would earn $61,500, an attorney supervisor would earn $64,157 and a chief public defender would earn $87,386.
Barnhill said the private sector will still pay more than the state will for attorneys, but enacting the modified pay rates would help alleviate the mass exodus from state government.
"We continue to be the farm team for everyone else," Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, told Barnhill after listening to her comments.
The subcommittee co-chairman, Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, said the raises, if enacted, would likely serve as a stopgap measure. Adjustments to state pay plans are likely during the upcoming regular session in January, he said.
"This is a temporary, if you will, fix for the rest of this fiscal year," he said.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson's general-revenue budget for fiscal 2017, which started July 1, did not include cost-of-living raises for the state's 28,000 employees but does allow merit-pay raises. The Arkansas Department of Correction gave salary increases to nearly 1,700 correctional officers at the start of fiscal 2017 to help recruit and retain employees.
Metro on 08/18/2016