South Dakota state government is surrendering to inflation. The Department of Transportation is giving its railroad lawyer a retroactive 18% raise to $450 an hour:
The Washington, D.C. law firm of Slover & Loftus is getting a raise of $70 per hour to work on railroad matters for the South Dakota Department of Transportation.
The state Railroad Board approved the increase Wednesday. The new $450 rate applies to legal work performed as of February 11 of this year.
One of the department’s lawyers, Karla Engle, recommended the raise for the law firm’s John LeSeur. “He is an essential part of the DOT team, frankly,” she said.
The rate had been $380 for nearly a decade, according to Engle.
Other state contracts with South Dakota law firms currently pay $195 per hour [Bob Mercer, “SDDOT to Pay Rail Lawyer $450 per Hour,” KELO-TV, 2022.04.20].
It’s nice to see that, occasionally, South Dakota can pay some workers a competitive market wage. Now if only the state could extend that generosity from its Beltway contractors to local South Dakotans.
Gardeners probably don’t deserve $450 an hour, but whatever wage the state is offering is not enough to get anyone to sign on to plant flowers around the State Fairgrounds… so Fair manager Peggy Besch trying to get people to do the work for free:
Besch said there’s been no luck trying to hire a gardener or an assistant to work full-time during the growing season leading up to this year’s September 1-5 fair. So she’s trying an...
Amid a swirl of public speculation and growing concern, the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has firmly rejected claims that it spent a staggering GH9 million on a turkey berry production project, de...