In spite of the wage freeze for state employees implemented over the last two budgets, the state still managed to grant pay raises to more than 2,600 state employees.
From the N&O today:
Thousands of state employees have gone without pay raises for two years while some of their colleagues have seen their wages swell 5 percent, 10 percent and more, even without getting promotions.
Top bureaucrats at the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services and Public Instruction received raises since June 2009.
….
An N&O analysis of salaries from June 2009 to June 2010 found 2,673 employees who got raises but have the same job title. The vast majority of these are people who are getting more money because they gained additional skills, moved from trainee to permanent jobs or are paid by the federal government. A smaller number are people who are getting more money because their duties expanded.
The article sites several notable examples of those that received pay raises, including heads at the troubled State Bureau of Investigation and higher-ups in HHS and the Department of Public Instruction. All the examples cited by the N&O article enjoyed pretty healthy salaries, many of them well into the six-figure range. Kind of dispels the notion of the “humble public servant.”
Perhaps this top-heavy pay structure skews the average state employee salary numbers, furthering the pay gap of state workers over North Carolina’s private sector workers.
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