Does Kansas government pay workers enough? Salary survey says no, at least for most jobs.

A salary survey of various state government jobs indicates that it’s past time for Kansas lawmakers to give raises to several classes of public employees.

Kansas is underpaying workers in most of the 100-plus job classifications in this year's market survey, according to data presented last month to a legislative committee. The revelation comes after lawmakers appropriated $225 million to increase salaries this fiscal year.

"The sweet spot really is you'd like to be within 5% of market one way or the other," said Kraig Knowlton, director of the Office of Personnel Services. "That indicates if you're just 5% below, you're within reach, you're probably competitive and it doesn't take a whole lot to get there. If you're a little bit over, it's good, you're just a little bit ahead of the curve.

"Another thing that, and it's hard to get people to see this sometimes, is it's not always a bad thing to be above market. It basically means that that particular benchmark, there's been a priority placed on it and we're doing better in comparison to our competitors for that particular position."

But Kansas pays several classifications far below 5% less than competitors.

Law clerks for state government are compensated 32% below their peers, accountants are paid 24% below market, both administrative officers and senior equipment mechanics are 21% below, social workers 20% below, drivers license examiners and epidemiologists are 19% below, among others.

Meanwhile, job classes compensated above market rates include Kansas Highway Patrol master troopers 30% above market, Capitol area guards 27% above their peers, economic development representatives 17% above, graphic designers 16% above and database administrators 14% above.

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Knowlton said Kansas has nearly 350 classified job classes, plus about double that number in unclassified job titles. Officials survey about one-third of the job classes annually. The 2022 survey, with data collected in July, has more than 100 jobs used as benchmarks for comparing state government pay to public and private sector jobs across Kansas and government jobs in nearby states.

The state sent surveys to hundreds of employers, but only about 25% responded. Knowlton said information is difficult to obtain from the private sector to compare executive level and management level jobs. Some industries are also less likely to participate, such as engineering.

They survey uses middle levels of jobs with multiple levels and the base pay average hourly rate. It does not show entry-level pay for new hires or upper ends of pay scales for more experienced employees.

Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, suggested there should be more focus on increasing compensation for the lowest-paid positions.

"The smaller increases for some of the lower level pay, it definitely makes a bigger impact on retention," Knowlton said. "Because quite frankly, it means more to someone who goes from $10 to $12 an hour than someone who goes from $30 to $31 or $31.50. ... The 5% applied to everybody, so that was as equal as you could get, but there are certain groups where a targeted increase would be more meaningful than others."

Lawmakers and board members could also see compensation increase.

Knowlton suggested an across-the-board increase in per diem or rates because the dollar amounts have not been increased for awhile. The per diem is $35, with other compensation available for some board members.

"It's tough to get people to come and want to do that," he said. "So I think any increase to the baseline at least would be welcomed from all the agencies that have boards and commissions."

About $1.5 million is budgeted for board member per diem this year.

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Kansas public employees got raises this year

Before this year, the last time Kansas adjusted the salaries of constitutional officers, other than judges, was 2009, said Dylan Dear, the managing fiscal analyst for the Kansas Legislative Research Department.

For fiscal year 2023, which began in July and runs through June, the Legislature added about $145 million to the budget to implement a 5% base salary increase for most employees. Excluded were legislators and other classes of employees that were covered by separate pay increases, some for more than 5%.

At the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, $3.6 million went to pay increases of between about 13% and about 19% for commissioned officers and were 11% for forensic scientists. At the Kansas Department for Children and Families, $3.7 million is funding protection specialist salary increases ranging from about 3% to about 13%. The Kansas Department of Corrections and state hospitals are getting about $57 million to continue pay raises initially funded with federal COVID-19 aid.

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Those and other salary adjustments put the total added spending for pay raises in fiscal year 2023 at $225 million.

The state budget authorizes about 41,700 full-time equivalent positions for the current fiscal year, up nearly 400 FTE positions. Most of the increase is due to additional staff at state prisons and hospitals, as well as more judicial system jobs, more staff at the Labor Department and additional positions at Wichita State University.

Of the about $145 million budgeted for the 5% pay increases, only about $120 million was used due to vacant positions, primarily at state prisons, hospitals and human services agencies. The single biggest beneficiaries were state universities, with $36 million combined for the University of Kansas and KU Medical Center, $20 million combined for Kansas State University and K-State Research and Extension and $9 million for Wichita State.

Should government employee raises be based on performance?

Rep. Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill and the committee chair, said he'd prefer future pay increases be based on performance and not a blanket increase. He said it would be an incentive for employees to increase their job performance.

"If you're in the private sector, it's based off of your work and your performance," he said. "But when we're talking about state government, we just give everybody a blanket 5%. Is there any way that we can have that discretion made by the agencies and the departments to decide based off of their work and performance that those good employees receive a pay increase and the ones who are non-performing do not?"

"That is actually one of the questions this committee has been charged with answering and how to go about implementing that kind of thing," Dear said.

He added that agency heads already have that discretion for unclassified employees, but it "gets a lot more complicated" for classified employees. A performance requirement for this year's pay raises was part of the original motion from the House Appropriations Committee, Dear said.

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Unclassified employees work "at will" and can be fired at any time, while classified employees have civil service protections and established policies for hiring, promotions, benefits and other personnel matters. State government has been shifting more of its workforce to unclassified status.

Kansas currently has 4,400 classified employees and 14,180 unclassified employees in the executive branch, excluding higher education, Knowlton said.

"For unclassified employees, that's essentially what you have right now," Knowlton said of performance-based pay. "... For classified employees, essentially there's no mechanism in regulation that allows to distinguish between someone who gets a better performance evaluation than someone else."

The Special Committee on State Employee and Board Member Compensation was authorized to meet three times between May and January, but only met once. Waymaster said he anticipated scheduling a second committee meeting, but not a third.

Waymaster said he would like to have additional information broken down by department to help decide whether pay increases are warranted for when committees work the budget next session.

The governor won't release her budget proposal until January. New tax revenue forecasts predict a $2.3 billion budget surplus at the end of the fiscal year, so officials have money to work with if they choose to increase compensation.

Newly elected House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said he expects legislation next session to increase pay for lawmakers and state officers, "but we'll see how that goes."

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas pays government employees below public and private market rates