Activist group blasts growth in state’s hires

LITTLE ROCK — Americans for Prosperity Foundation-Arkansas reports “an alarming growth in Arkansas’ government jobs” since 2000.

The state has added 14,300 jobs since February 2000, an additional cost to taxpayers of about $685 million per year, said the group’s Arkansas director, Teresa Oelke.

This, she said, is “clear evidence that Arkansas has a spending problem.”

The foundation’s study was done by Carl Oberg, who relied on figures from the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

He arrived at the cost by multiplying 14,300 jobs times a mean wage estimate for all state government workers of $47,910.

The state payroll has grown - the numbers have been reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - but it has been largely becauseof policy decisions made by the state, mostly pertaining to education and crime, state officials replied.

And they said the foundation’s numbers “do not provide an accurate portrait of this growth.”

Tim Leathers, state revenue commissioner, and Kay Terry, head of the Office of Personnel Management in the Department of Finance and Administration, responded that because the bureau’s surveys do not distinguish between full- and part-time employees, workers who handle multiple part-time jobs appear on the bureau's survey as multiple employees of the state.

Also, the bureau data do not distinguish between positions funded entirely by the state and those that may be supported by other sources, Leathers and Terry said.

Generally the bureau’s numbers are about 35 percenthigher than the total job positions reported by the state’s Office of Budget in its tracking of the payroll, they said. The Office of Budget data concern only filled, full-time positions.

The state’s way of calculating the numbers provides “a stable, more-established basis on which to make a year-toyear analysis of staffing levels within state government,” the state said in response to the group’s report.

Data supplied by the Office of Budget said state government jobs increased from 46,534 in 2000 to 55,793 in 2009, an increase of 9,259 jobs, or 19.9 percent.

The majority of this growth - 85 percent - resulted from increased state support for higher education and criminal justice, Leathers and Terry said.

Staffing levels at two- and four-year colleges increased from 17,804 in 2000 to 24,132 in 2009, up 35.5 percent. Of the 9,259 jobs added since 2000, higher education is responsible for 68 percent.

Jobs at the Arkansas Department of Correction increased from 2,762 in 2000 to 3,837 in 2009, up nearly 39 percent, the state said. Staffing at the Department of Community Correction increased 67 percent, from 720 in 2000 to 1,205 in 2009.

Also, the state said, there has been an increase in public school employees, who do not show up in the total number of people employed by the state. Thanks in part to the state spending heavily on public schools, payrolls - teachers, district staff and co-op employees - increased from 58,227 jobs in 2000 to 70,051 in 2009, up about 20 percent, Leathers and Terry said.

Oelke said growth in the number of state jobs makes it harder to attract or retain private jobs.

As the Arkansas privatesector economy lost 31,600 jobs over the past year, a 3.3 percent decline, the taxpayerpaid government work force “is not proportionally sharing in the pain that private workers are facing. During the past year, taxpayer-supported jobs in Arkansas increased by 1,800 jobs,” Oelke said.

The loss of 31,600 private workers supporting the salary of government workers “translates into a growing burden” for private-sector workers, Oelke said.

Since 2000, Arkansas has had the fifth-fastest-growing government sector of all 50 states, she said.

Americans For Prosperity issued another report about two months ago that also asserted the state spends too much.

The foundation describes itself as an organization of “citizen leaders committed to advancing economic freedom and opportunity” and says “reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans.” It is funded in part by a foundation that is one of the Koch Family Foundations established by a family that owns an oil conglomerate.

Americans for Prosperity contended that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is “an accurate source of information” and that its assessment of Arkansas state government jobs growth “remains solid.” Using the bureau’s data allows comparisons on a state to state, apples to apples basis, it said.

“The BLS is what the president of the United States bases his job findings on,” the foundation said.

“DFA’s argument highlights the problem that during good times government expands at a much faster rate than the economy but unlike private entities they don’t scale back when hard times hit,” the foundation said of the Department of Finance and Administration.

Leathers said the majority of the job growth is “consistent with policies endorsed and enacted by Arkansas’ elected officials to improve education, improve the economy and preserve the public peace.”

The group’s report may be found at http://americansforprosperity.org/040510-arkansas-government-jobsupdate.