Since Gregoire has been in office the (dem majority) legislature has passed a 26 BILLION dollar tax increase....essentially giving the working people of this state a pay cut......and then, like a slap in the face, increased the wages of her Cabinet. Is there any doubt what so ever that dems are the party of big government?
Thankfully even some of my dem friends are concerned.
M
Monday, June 13, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
Gregoire's Cabinet: same look, higher pay
By Ralph Thomas
Seattle Times Olympia bureau
OLYMPIA — In many ways, Gov. Christine Gregoire's 23-member Cabinet looks a lot like her predecessor's — same number of minorities, a similar average age, even some of the same appointees.
But there is at least one notable difference: Gregoire's Cabinet is costing taxpayers a lot more than former Gov. Gary Locke's.
All but three of Gregoire's Cabinet appointees are making significantly more than the jobs paid under Locke — including five appointees who are making at least $20,000 more, and an additional six who are making at least $10,000 more.
In all, Gregoire's Cabinet will earn about $256,000 a year more than the previous Cabinet when Locke stepped down.
And that comes on top of big raises that Locke gave many Cabinet members last year as enticement to stay on through the end of his administration.
Another way of looking at it: Since 2003, the average salary for Cabinet members has soared from less than $108,000 to almost $125,000 — nearly a 16 percent increase.
By comparison, rank-and-file state workers will see their wages grow by 4.8 percent over the next two years, their first pay raises in four years. Gregoire, whose salary is set by an independent citizen commission, is scheduled to get a 4 percent raise — to $151,000 — over the next two years.
State's top management
Members of the Cabinet oversee the 23 departments under the governor's control, including some of the state's largest agencies, such as the Department of Social and Health Services and the Department of Labor and Industries. Those 23 departments employ nearly 43,000 state employees, about 40 percent of the state total.
During last year's campaign, Gregoire — like her Republican opponent Dino Rossi — talked frequently about how she would shake up state government and "change the culture" of Olympia. But nearly two-thirds of her Cabinet appointees and senior managers are longtime state employees and Olympia insiders. Six Cabinet members and her chief of staff are holdovers from the Locke administration.
Dick Davis, head of the business-backed Washington Research Council, called it "another round of musical chairs in Olympia."
Though she has been in office nearly five months, Gregoire didn't finish assembling her Cabinet until June 1, when she reappointed Juli Wilkerson as director of the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.
Tom Fitzsimmons, Gregoire's chief of staff, said the Cabinet raises were long overdue. He said state government has fallen far behind the private sector and many local governments in what it pays top managers.
"We wanted to hire and retain the best people we could for these positions, and frankly, when the recruiting began, we were behind clearly in our ability to compete," said Fitzsimmons, who also served as Locke's last chief of staff.
But with the state facing perennial budget shortfalls, critics say Gregoire's pay raises send a bad message.
"It does raise some eyebrows," said Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland. "Given our state's budget situation and given the fact that most of these people were already working in state government, it seems unnecessary to be giving them big pay raises."
Not an easy transition
Gregoire assembled her Cabinet under difficult circumstances. She didn't find out until just a few weeks before inauguration day that she had won the closest governor's race in state history. And with a Republican court challenge that didn't end until last week, a cloud of uncertainty has hung over her administration.
Still, more than 500 people sent in résumés for one of the 40 or so top political-appointee jobs — including Cabinet, senior management and policy advisory posts, said Mary Riveland, who oversaw Gregoire's recruiting effort.
Gregoire's Cabinet choices have drawn praise.
"I would say the governor has done quite well, particularly given the election uncertainties," said Steve Mullin, president of the Washington Roundtable, a business lobbying group.
Gregoire, the state's second woman governor (after Dixy Lee Ray, 1976-80), hired 10 women to run state agencies — three more than were serving in Locke's Cabinet last year. She also matched Locke in hiring minorities for the Cabinet, with seven.
"I wish we had hit a higher number [of minorities] than that," Riveland said. "I think it makes a great statement."
Gregoire ordered nationwide searches for a few positions and wound up hiring three Cabinet members from out of state, including Robin Arnold-Williams, who left a state-government job in Utah to take over the embattled Department of Social and Health Services.
But only four of Gregoire's 23 Cabinet members are people who have never worked in state government here or elsewhere. And only eight list any private-sector experience on their résumés.
Salary ranges fall short
"We had a lot of names that were given to us by the business community, but we just couldn't reach them with the salary ranges," Riveland said.
She said the state also has a hard time competing against the salaries many local-government managers receive.
Riveland and Fitzsimmons said that's the main reason Gregoire decided to hire all of her Cabinet members at or near the maximum amounts allowed under a salary schedule set by the State Committee on Agency Officials' Salaries.
The seven-member panel — which includes government, business and labor leaders — periodically looks at comparable public- and private-sector jobs in setting salary levels for governor-appointed positions.
Fitzsimmons noted that the last such study, completed nearly four years ago, showed top-level state executive salaries lagging behind managers in comparable positions by as much as 35 percent.
One example he noted: The Tacoma city-manager job pays up to $190,000 — $40,000 more than the governor or any Cabinet member is making.
Sense of public service
Davis, with the Washington Research Council, agrees it is a problem that some local-government jobs pay so much more than top state jobs. But he said it's wrong to compare private-sector executive jobs with state-government Cabinet posts.
A sense of public service, not money, is supposed to be what draws people to political appointments, he said.
"At the senior-executive level, state government is never going to be competitive with the private sector," Davis said.
Even by hiring Cabinet appointees at the top-rung pay ranges, Fitzsimmons said he knows of several people who had to take pay cuts to come to work for the administration.
One is Jay Manning, the new director of the Department of Ecology. Though he is making $135,000 — $20,000 more than his predecessor — Manning said he took a "significant" pay cut when he left his private law practice in Seattle.
Manning, who previously spent 15 years as an attorney for the state, said that when he entered private practice more than six years ago, he discovered "there's a whole other world out there in terms of compensation."
Though he considered the job at Ecology the "opportunity of a lifetime," he said the money made it a difficult decision.
"I had to think hard about it," Manning said. "I have two kids in college right now and another headed in that direction. ... I had to look at whether I could do it financially."
Besides Manning, two other new Cabinet members — Personnel Director Eva Santos and Revenue Director Cindi Yates — are making at least $20,000 more than their predecessors were making after last year's raises.
In some cases, Cabinet members new to their jobs are making significantly more than the longtime veterans they replaced.
For instance, Harold Clarke, the new director of the Department of Corrections, is making $135,000 a year. That's $27,000 a year more than Joe Lehman, who held the job for nearly eight years, earned before getting a big raise in the fall of 2003.
Arnold-Williams, at Social and Health Services, and Victor Moore, Gregoire's budget chief, are making $150,000 — in both cases considerably more than the veteran agency heads they replaced.
Two holdovers from the Locke administration — Wilkerson at Community, Trade and Economic Development, and Department of Health Director Mary Selecky — received $20,000 raises.
The hefty increases might not sit well with some state employees, who next month will get the first installment of their 4.8 percent raise.
But Tim Welch, spokesman for the Washington Federation of State Employees, AFL-CIO, said there is a "silver lining" to Gregoire's push to boost Cabinet-level salaries.
"It will certainly bolster our position next time we go to the bargaining table," Welch said. "We'll be able to say, 'We got 3.2 percent our first year, you guys got 15 percent.' "
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