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Gov. Nathan Deal’s victory in November has resulted in a windfall for top aides and senior officials, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.
Most of the governor’s aides saw their six-figure salaries raised 10 percent, and the governor’s longtime chief of staff is making nearly as much as the governor himself. Others tapped by Deal to move into new jobs received salaries that are tens of thousands of dollars more than their old ones, the AJC found. And dozens of Georgia’s top appointed officials also received hefty pay raises this fiscal year.
The pay hikes come as Deal is offering state agencies just 1 percent to provide raises to lower-level staffers. School districts are also being given extra money that systems can use, if they like, to boost teacher pay. But few if any are expected to get anywhere near a 10 percent hike.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are weighing a proposal that would grant $12,000 pay hikes for Supreme Court and Appeals Court judges, along with increases for some Superior Court judges and district attorneys. Supreme Court and Appeals Court judges would earn $179,000 a year, and Appeals Court judges $178,000. Some Superior Court judges are already earning about $185,00 a year.
Unlike raises for judges, which require legislative approval, the raises authorized by the Deal administration come with no legislative oversight. The executive branch gets the final say over pay for their top employees, even as lawmakers control the purse-strings for the overall budget and decide what is doled out to agencies and school districts for other staffers, from accountants and technical staff to teachers.
The governor’s office told the AJC that the raises approved by the governor are necessary to retain top employees.
“Senior staff could easily earn significantly more and have less stress than they do in the governor’s office,” said Chris Riley, Deal’s chief of staff. “But their dedication to the governor and state has allowed this team to remain constant and not a revolving door.”
But Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, D-Tucker, who runs a union training program in Stone Mountain, argued the wide disparities in raises was creating a two-tiered system of pay in state government.
“People at the top get raises and the working people don’t,” Henson said. “It’s been happening throughout America the past few decades, and in state government we’re seeing more of that, too.
“If you have contact with the decision makers, the governor, the Legislature, you get raises,” he added. “We’ve seen teachers who have lost real buying power over the last few years. State employees, if you take into consideration inflation, are almost all making less than they were 10 years ago.
“We need to address those workers, not just people we interact with at the Capitol.”
Three of Deal’s top aides were not even on the state payroll for part of 2014, having taken leaves to work for Deal’s political campaign. But they returned to generous pay raises after the governor’s re-election.
Most of Deal’s top aides received a pay hike of about $12,500, giving six of his top staffers a $137,500 salary this year. Riley got a slimmer pay increase to $138,500, just under the governor’s annual pay of $139,339.
Riley said the pay of his senior staff was frozen from 2011 to 2014 and that the raises were not just rewards for hard work, but also needed to keep aides from taking other jobs. Much of Deal’s core team, including Riley, chief operating officer Bart Gobeil, executive counsel Ryan Teague, legislative liaison David Werner and communications chief Brian Robinson, has remained stable since shortly after his 2010 election.
Riley, Robinson and Werner all took a leave from the governor's office to help run Deal's re-election campaign last year.
New appointees of the governor’s were also hired at sharply higher pay than their predecessors. Homer Bryson, the new head of the Department of Corrections, is getting about $11,000 more than the longtime commissioner he replaced, although he’s never led a state agency. Economic development chieftain Chris Carr and Chris Tomlinson of the State and Roadway Toll Authority also got significantly higher pay than the leaders before them.
Another new appointee, Corinna Robinson, wife of communications chief Brian Robinson, is making $27,000 more than her longtime predecessor at the state Non-Public Postsecondary Education Commission, which regulates most private for-profit schools. Corinna Robinson was previously Deal's disability services ombudsman and sat on the commission's board.
Riley said several of the staffers received raises after “years of excellent service.” He said Bryson, for one, was given the raise based on his experience, resume and his commitment to the governor’s criminal justice reform initiative.
Other staffers down the ranks got thicker pay envelopes. A member of Deal's security team, State Patrol Sgt. James Andrews, more than doubled his pay to $119,750 when Deal made him deputy commissioner of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
That's $250 less than is earned by the head of that agency, Harris Blackwood, who received a $12,000 pay hike in 2013. Blackwood was required to undergo workplace training last year after he made inappropriate comments about sexual activities to his employees. His female deputy left to take another job. Blackwood didn't get a raise in 2014, but he now makes $20,000 a year more than when the governor hired him in 2011 after working on the Deal's campaign.
Blackwood’s agency promotes driver safety and has a relatively small state budget of $3.5 million.
The pay increases come even as Deal pushed cuts to health insurance subsidies to bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other part-time school employees. Quentin Hutchins, an Atlanta Public Schools bus driver, said he was stunned to learn of them.
“It’s ironic that he’s awarding his top staff with more pay while proposing cuts to those of us who transport Georgia’s most precious cargo,” said Hutchins, whose route spans Atlanta’s Poncey-Highland neighborhood.
In some cases, the 2015 pay for top executives will rise even higher. The figures don’t include added income, performance pay and other bonuses that aren’t paid until the end of the fiscal year in July.
One of the more peculiar pay discrepancies is on the five-member pardons and parole board, all of whom essentially do the same job. Three of them, two of whom are former legislators, get paid roughly $128,000 a year.
But Deal's newest appointee, ex-prisons chief Brian Owens, came in at nearly $150,000, which was about what he made in his previous job. The governor sets salaries for board member and Riley said Owens' was set higher because it was a lateral move from his old post. Braxton Cotton, meanwhile, a newer member who is a former state trooper and the prior head of the governor's ex-offender transition initiative, makes $117,000.
Deal appointees weren’t the only ones seeing more money. Top officials whose agencies are governed by appointed boards often get pay hikes, even when their employees do not.
Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Williams, a former state lawmaker whose agency got hammered by severe budget cuts during the Great Recession, has seen his pay rise from $141,000 to $175,000 over the past two years. Williams’ pay is set by the DNR board, which is appointed by Deal and made up heavily of top campaign campaign contributors.
DNR officials declined to comment on Williams’ raise.
Some of the big pay raises at agencies went to top underlings. For instance, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler’s $122,000 salary is set by law as an elected official. But he decides the pay of staff, and he gave his chief of staff Brooke Lucas a $20,000 raise, to $145,000.
Butler said Lucas was one of several top managers to get big raises.
“This (Lucas) is somebody who went and paid her way through school and got an MBA and she is doing three jobs instead of one,” Butler said. “Other agencies keep trying to hire her. If you lose some top people to another state agency for a higher salary, it’s your fault.”
Butler said he, like some other agency heads in state government, has had a hard time keeping some of his best workers because salaries are generally lower than they are in the private sector and because raises were scarce after the recession.
“Every state employee needs a raise,” Butler said. “Our pay hasn’t been keeping up with the market. We haven’t seen significant pay raises in 10 years. I am tired of losing people.”
Charlie Flemming, president of the AFL-CIO labor union’s Georgia chapter, wonders why that same strategy doesn’t seem to trickle down.
“Georgia’s workforce is overburdened and understaffed already. It’s inherently unfair to raise wages for the leaders and not for the rank-and-file,” said Flemming. “And it’s about time we say enough is enough.”
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