A standing room only crowd packed into the hearing room for the state employee pay plan. Members of the House Appropriations Committee are considering whether to implement the pay plan agreement reached between the Bullock administration and the various public employee unions.
Sheila Hogan heads the Department of Administration. She was one of several agency administrators who spoke in favor of the pay plan.
Hogan says her Financial Services Division has had a 100 percent turnover in the past two years. That impacts the state's reporting for bond ratings and it hurts local governments that need help with their financial reporting.
Hogan and other department directors say their employees have been lured away by higher paying jobs elsewhere or have refused state jobs once talk turns to salary.
"If we cannot hire the best and the brightest we will be forced to accept lower performing applicants. And mediocrity costs money."
The state pay plan also has a direct financial impact for Montana college students and their families, says Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian.
As part of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Christian, the governor, and members of the Education Appropriations subcommittee, tuition will be frozen for the next two years if the Legislature agrees to fully fund the state pay plan.
"We’re willing to do our share, in fact we’re willing to do the lion’s share, within the Montana University System, but this bill is an important piece of the college affordability plan."
Much of the committee’s questions, however, focused on the last session’s pay plan and whether or not the Bullock Administration carried out the Legislature’s intent. After about an hour of dancing around that question, Appropriations Chair Nancy Ballance interrupted and stopped that line of questioning.
"We need to be as clear as we can be that it's not the employees who should suffer any of the consequences of the political issues that we get into in this body. And I think we are where we are, we know where we are, we will probably not come to agreement over what and how and why last session's issues got resolved but I think the important thing is knowing exactly where we are now on House Bill 13 and how we proceed further."
This session, House Bill 13 is clear.
Under the collective bargaining agreement, House Bill 13 would give workers a 50 cent per hour pay raise beginning October first this year and again next October.
The agreement also increases the state’s contribution for an employee’s health insurance.
No one spoke against the bill.
