The news that Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue has given some of her aides generous pay raises after only six months on the job won’t sit well with state employees wondering whether the legislature will preserve the 2 percent raises they’re hoping for.
It also will raise eyebrows among taxpayers who chaff at footing double-digit pay hikes for executive-branch bureaucrats when other recent headlines have raised the possibility of cuts in mental-health services, university staffing and other services. For someone who’s lucky to get even a cost-of-living raise this year —or, if you’re in the textile industry or some other hard-hit segment of North Carolina’s manufacturing sector, to still have a job — it can be pretty galling to contemplate the $10,000 raise Perdue gave her chief of staff (raising the annual salary to $79,000) or the $6,000 bump accorded her director of communications ($61,300). Plus, those employees are also eligible for any statewide pay increases the legislature approves in the final budget.
While Perdue’s office says the raises had been in the works for a while, the timing is still terrible, considering the state’s budget problems. Beyond the immediate public-relations blotch, however, the raises point to a longstanding reality of state government employment: There are really two classes of workers — the rank-and-file employees who guard prisoners and process paperwork and perform the myriad other duties that keep the state running, and the upper echelon staffers who work in the legislative or executive branches, or report to independent boards or commissions.
While the faceless rank-and-filers stage rallies at the capitol in an attempt to pry open the legislative piggy bank, the latter workers depend on the largesse and good will of the officials who hired them. Of course, the proximity to power comes at a price. While they have fatter salaries, their job security usually extends no further than the next election.
Generous raises for these mid-level bureaucrats have raised questions before. In 1994, former Speaker Dan Blue had to rationalize raises of up to $20,000 each for several legislative staffers. And former Gov. Jim Hunt handed out some hefty raises of 10 percent or more to several staffers.
But in those cases, at least, the state was on sounder financial footing, which cushioned the controversy. That’s not the case this year, which is why Perdue is catching heat and we ‘re confronted with the disconnect between one branch of government scrambling to pay the bills while another branch is able to pad employees’ paychecks.
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