(TNS) — The Idaho Legislature last year commissioned a job market study to find out how the state could make employee salaries more competitive amid significant turnover.
The study decided the state, Idaho’s largest employer, should offer 4 percent merit-based raises this year, along with additional hikes over the next two years for highly competitive job fields, such as public safety, nursing and information technology.
Budget-setting lawmakers last month rejected the recommendations, opting instead for statewide hourly raises, and in recent weeks the committee directed enhanced raises to select agencies. That included an 11 percent total raise for employees at Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s office.
Labrador told lawmakers that his attorneys are earning less than other public employers. But his office was excluded as a priority in the job market study.
Idaho’s top human resources official warned the moves by the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) could aggravate the factors driving high turnover, which reached 22 percent statewide last year.
Approving raises on an agency-by-agency basis will cause deeper pay inequity and rouse frustrations among employees who end up on the “losing” side of the committee’s decisions, said Lori Wolff, administrator of the Division of Human Resources.
The selective approach may also lead to conflicts with a law requiring that state employees who have similar duties receive proportional compensation.
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