Many teachers and state employees will get their largest state-funded raises since the Great Recession on July 1, but some highly-paid agency leaders may be getting even bigger bumps.
The General Assembly approved a 3 percent increase in spending for the upcoming budget year to offer pay hikes to 200,0000 state employees and teachers, although educators in some districts say local officials are not passing along all the raise money.
Meanwhile, the state ethics commission is scheduled to vote later this month on a 10 percent pay raise for its executive director, who is already making 65 percent more than his predecessor. The Board of Regents recently voted to give some of the system's highly-paid presidents raises of up to 5 percent.
Other boards that govern agencies have yet to vote on pay raises for their leaders, but more increases are possible.
Teacher groups aren’t happy to hear that the people running state agencies and schools may be getting bigger raises than the rank-and-file.
“Agencies are apparently finding it difficult to attract and retain quality employees with stagnant pay scales,” said John Palmer, a Cobb County schools band director and spokesman for the teacher and state employee group TRAGIC. “It is time Georgia starts investing back into the state and the state’s employees at every level, not just the top.”
Deal proposed a 3 percent increase in salary for state agencies and teachers in January after several years of little or no raises. Lawmakers went along with his proposal, adding money to provide bigger raises for select employees, such as public health nurses, in areas where the state is seeing massive turnover.
School districts were given 3 percent more money for personnel, and most were expected to pass along the money in the form of raises. But Deal and state lawmakers left that decision up to local school boards, and not all are giving 3 percent raises, according to teachers who emailed The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and school groups.
That’s also been true in recent years, particularly in rural Georgia, where any extra money in some districts has been used to fill gaps in local budgets, to end furloughs or lengthen school years that were cut during the Great Recession.
“We have been getting reports trickling in of districts planning to do everything from giving 4 percent to some and zero to others in the same district; passing along only a portion of the 3 percent; and one that seemed to be unaware of the increase at all,” said Sid Chapman, president of the Georgia Association of Educators.
Chris Riley, the governor’s chief of staff, sent agency heads an email in early May spelling out the importance of the raises. He told them that if they thought they should get raises, they needed to send a request to his office or the Office of Planning and Budget director.
“As the agency head, you know best where to target these state dollars,” Riley wrote.
Teresa MacCartney, the governor’s budget director, said most agency heads she’s heard from have told her they are not seeking raises. One proposed pay raise, a 3.5 percent increase for Ashley Willcott, director of the Office of the Child Advocate, was turned down, MacCartney said.
The governor’s office can’t directly stop boards that run many state agencies from doling out bigger raises.
The AJC documented that pattern three years ago, noting, for instance, that the head of the state's technical college system got 20 percent raises from his board at a time when his agency's funding was cut and most other state employees and teachers were being furloughed or going without increases.
Less than two weeks after Riley's memo the Board of Regents approved raises of between 1.5 percent and 5 percent — equating to increases of between about $2,750 and $12,196 — for college presidents. The raises were called modest, and they were compared with last year, when salaries for some presidents were boosted up to 10 percent and two of them topped $1 million.
The ethics commission is scheduled to vote June 23 on raising the pay of its executive secretary, Stefan Ritter, from $165,000 to $181,500.
Deal, by contrast, is paid $139,000 a year.
Ritter, a former senior assistant attorney general, was hired a year ago to be the new director of the ethics commission.
He was paid $106,000 at the Attorney General's Office in 2014. The ethics commission hired him at $165,000 in April 2015. His predecessor at the commission, Holly LaBerge, was not a lawyer and was making $100,000 before she was fired in September 2014 following a judge's ruling that she had been "dishonest and nontransparent" over the course of a whistleblower lawsuit filed by her predecessor.
Ritter has whittled down a backlog of cases the commission piled up under LaBerge and has worked to produce new rules and regulations for candidates and lobbyists. Deal and the Assembly rewarded the commission by more than doubling its budget the past few years.
“Regarding Stefan’s raise, it is well-deserved based on the experience he brings to the commission, and his accomplishments as executive director,” said R. Lawton Jordan, the panel’s chairman. “Stefan has more relevant experience than any director hired by the commission. When Stefan took over, the commission was just beginning to recover from well-documented problems.
“Stefan has accelerated this recovery,” he added.
Still, it’s tough for educators to swallow big pay raises for agency heads when some teachers may not get any increase this year.
“The sad irony is not lost on us that the leadership in some state agencies can undeniably look forward to their raises without concern over the funding being used for other purposes,” Chapman of GAE said. “While we are sure agency leaders feel their raises are important to them, our rank and file teachers, who are molding our future leaders, feel just as strongly about receiving theirs.”
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