A legislative panel on Tuesday signed off on the state Department of Commerce's Division of Workforce Services plan to create a database administrator post with a salary range of $99,920 to $144,884 a year.
Several lawmakers on the Legislative Council's Personnel Subcommittee raised questions about the division's proposal to create the post and surrender five vacant lower-paying positions. The subcommittee then recommended the Legislative Council approve the proposal when it meets Friday.
The Division of Workforce Services needs the position to oversee all computer science and information technology operations with the agency, state Office of Personnel Management Administrator Kay Barnhill said in a letter to the subcommittee.
"This position will be responsible for developing a strategy plan for moving the agency's current systems into system compliance," Barnhill wrote in her letter. "The agency needs an administrator lead-type of position in order to assist with attracting an ideal applicant pool."
The agency's previous information technology director retired in June, said Tony Robinson, personnel review administrator for the Bureau of Legislative Research.
The Division of Workforce Services is part of the Commerce Department under Gov. Asa Hutchinson's reorganization plan that reduced the number of agencies reporting to him from 42 to 15, effective July 1.
Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said, "I thought at one point we said that everything just about was going to flow [to] the [Division] of Information Systems and that they would be responsible largely for information technology rather than having this body over here, this body over here, this body over here.
"Now, we want a $99,000 position, so I am concerned about what happened," she said. "Where is the coordination?"
Barnhill said some state agencies have a top information technology administrator who is paid at least $100,000 a year.
Charisse Childers, Workforce Services director, said the division is working with the Division of Information Systems and that its director, Yessica Jones, and her staff recommended the creation of the new database administrator post.
The Division of Information Systems is part of the Department of Transformation and Shared Services.
Childers said the Division of Information Systems "is a cost-recovery agency, and so in order for them to provide services, they have been able to recoup that cost from the agencies, so if they were to hire someone ... even in a contract position, we pay for those positions out of our agency.
"So their operation method isn't set up so they can support every single agency within the state," she said. "However, we utilize their services regularly, monthly, and provide quite a bit of funding to DIS" to pay for the support the Workforce Services Division receives.
"But our hope is that with adding this position with this level of expertise, that we will be able to ... modernize our systems from their current status, which is at a critical point," Childers said.
In exchange for creating the database administrator post, the Division of Workforce Services proposed surrendering vacant positions: three for fiscal support specialist, an apprentice tradesman post and an administrative specialist. The salary ranges are in the mid-$20,000s to mid-$30,000s.
"I guess what I have a hard time getting my mind around sometimes is we have got this money on the books that is not being spent, it's just hanging out there, but we are really ... about to start spending money out of the checkbook for another position between $99,000 and $144,000," Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said.
Childers said in a letter to Barnhill that the Division of Workforce Services anticipates saving about $38,000, including benefit and insurance premium savings, by making the staff changes. She said these are federally funded positions.
She said the Division of Workforce Services has four contract employees with the Division of Information Systems and that their hourly rates range from $66 to $132.
"We estimate that by moving our systems and modernizing them that we won't be operating on these legacy systems, which requires the work of these individuals that created those systems, so that's our goal," Childers said. It "will take us at least two years to migrate, and that's a conservative estimate."
Earlier in its meeting, without asking any questions, the Personnel Subcommittee recommended the Legislative Council on Friday approve Southeast Arkansas College's proposal to create a database administrator post with a salary range of $45,377 to $79,462 a year.
That position has been requested to fulfill an immediate need for an employee with specialized training with structured query language and coding as well as database experience, Division of Higher Education Director Maria Markham said in a letter to the subcommittee.
Metro on 09/18/2019