Category — Talk Back
Talk Back: Union presses Ritter on pay-raise bill
May 21st, 2010 — Economy, Labor, Press, Talk Back
This story is getting a lot of press attention partially because the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Post management don't like it. It's frustrating because neither group has taken the time to learn about problems with the current state compensation system and how this bill addresses them.
It's hard to understand why either group even cares about this bill; they apparently believe the bill will give some benefit to state employees (beyond general good management) and that goes against their general bias against employees.
Talk Back responds to media coverage with my comments in blue.
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By Tim Hoover
The Denver Post
Posted: 05/20/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
The largest union representing state employees has launched a campaign urging Gov. Bill Ritter to sign legislation revamping the pay-raise system for state workers. >The effort by Colorado WINS comes amid worry over whether Ritter, who has expressed concerns about House Bill 1409, will veto the bill. Ritter's office has said only that it is giving the bill careful consideration.
"We need to do our due diligence to let the governor know this (bill) is a priority," said Bob Gibson, executive director of Colorado WINS.
The union's website urges WINS members to call the governor's office and express support for the bill, which would move the state from a pay system that is now based primarily on performance to one that would, in theory, grant gradual pay increases as long as workers get satisfactory evaluations.
The current system is not "based primarily on performance." It was originally called "Pay for Performance," but it never lived up to that name, The Ritter Administration changed the name to "Achievement Pay" is partial recognition that it lacks a performance component.
It doesn't even matter if the system includes a performance component or not. The Governor's Deputy Personnel Director testified in committee that the state does a "very bad" job of evaluating employee performance. Very little employee compensation has been based on performance and the minute amount that has been is awarded almost randomly.
"In the final hours of the 2010 Colorado Legislative session, Colorado WINS members helped to pass House Bill 1409 to eliminate the broken 'pay for performance' system," the website says. "But we're not done yet — we need to call Governor Ritter and urge him to sign HB 1409 into law."
Ritter officials have expressed concerns about whether the bill diminishes the governor's power to recommend raises. Under current law, the governor — in his budget recommendations — can call for performance-based pay hikes for employees, but they still must be approved by lawmakers, who write the budget. Ritter then can veto line items in the budget, if he chooses.
The state's current Achievement Pay system included two components: salary survey and performance pay. The Governor can recommend whatever he wants, but the legislature decides whether salary survey, achievement pay, or both get funded and how much money goes into them. The Governor could line-item-veto either of them, but that would kill all of the salary survey or all of the performance pay, not the amount that goes to individual departments or employees. In practice, of course, we haven't been putting any money into either of them. We've cut state employee salaries for this year and next year.
The bill would qualify state employees who are meeting performance standards for 12 annual incremental pay increases, but any pay hikes still would have to be approved by lawmakers. No pay increases would take effect for at least three years, and that's assuming the state had money to fund them.
State employees have had no raises the past two years and had furloughs in the current fiscal year ending in June. They face 2.5 percent pay cuts in the next fiscal year, on top of higher contributions they must make to their pensions.
Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, sponsored the pay-hike bill and said its prospects are shaky.
"The indication I've had is that he (Ritter) is probably going to veto it," said Pommer, who said the governor's office initially agreed to support the bill but got cold feet when the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce came out against it.
"This is the weird thing," Pommer said. "We had an agreement."
But Evan Dreyer, Ritter's spokesman, denied the office broke any deal.
"Not true," Dreyer said. "What's true is that with every piece of legislation, the governor has an open-door policy — where lawmakers, interested parties and constituent groups have the governor's ear and the ear of his staff.
"Not true," says I. Evan Dreyer is wrong. We had an agreement. The Governor's office told us what we would have to put into the bill to get the Governor's approval, we put it in the bill and the Governor's office said he would sign it. Two days later, the Governor's office told us the Governor's position had changed.
The Governor may have an open door-policy, but he's rarely familiar enough with a topic to actually negotiate it. His staff does that. It would be impractical to negotiate with the Governor himself on every issue.
Negotiating with the Governor's staff can be difficult. They, and we, have to assume that they have the authority to negotiate for the Governor. We know that their views can diverge from the Governor's, and that the Governor can change his mind; we're always mindful of that, and the staff is pretty good letting us know when they have to check with the Governor on a point.
I'm using the term "Governor" here in a generic sense. "Governor" doesn't necessarily mean the person; it's usually the consensus among the person and all of his aides. "We need to run this by the Governor," can mean reviewing it with the Governor's legal counsel or chief-of-staff.
To get back to the point, we negotiate all the time and we all know that things change, this was different.
"The legislative process is a dynamic process," he said. "Bills change as they move through committee from one chamber to the other and back to committees."
May 21, 2010 No Comments
The Promise is the Message
July 24th, 2009 — Elections, Politics, Talk Back
What if the only promise a candidate ever made was to never promise anything? Could he keep that promise? We probably wouldn’t let any candidate get away with it, but I’m beginning to think that it’s the only promise we should ever accept.
David Sirota wrote in the Denver Post that campaign promises used to be sacred. “Breaking campaign pledges was one of the surest ways for politicians to hurt themselves — until 2006.” he wrote. He worries that his children “will guffaw in disbelief when I tell them politicians once knew that breaking campaign promises without explanation had consequences.”
Campaign promises have been the but of jokes for too long to have ever been sacred. But there does suddenly seem to be a lot of talk about them. Sure the blogs are full of critiques, but even the mainstream media is weighing in, papers like the LA Times and the New York Times. One paper’s website even has an “Obameter” keeping track of the President’s record of promises kept, broken or compromised.
Does this always happen when president gets elected? Is President Obama getting special scrutiny? Did an unusually large number of people believe his promises? It’s hard to say. But campaign promises are always a problem.
Joseph Ellis thinks politicians routinely break promises. Ellis is a professor at Mount Holyoke College who teaches about presidential history. He was on NPR while back explaining why presidents break promises. He missed the mark, I think.
First, he claims just two presidents kept their promises: George Washington and James Polk. I have no idea if that’s true. It doesn’t matter anyway. Who knows what Washington promised? Who knows James Polk was president?
Then he suggests politicians break promises because modern campaigns don’t allow time for deliberation and that campaigns have nothing to do with a candidate’s ability to govern.
This doesn’t make much sense. If modern campaigns are the problem, why are Washington and Polk the only presidents who kept their promises? What about Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and so on?
His other two explanations are better, and related: People can’t predict what will happen and they often change their views. He’s uses George W. Bush and 9/11 as an example. Bad example, but a reasonable point.
I think there are two basic reason why politicians break campaign promises. First, they make stupid promises during the campaign. Second, there’s little consequence to breaking a promise. [Read more →]
July 24, 2009 No Comments
Re-Bruce Part II
April 2nd, 2009 — Talk Back
By The Daily Sentinel
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
The Mesa County commissioners apparently spooked Democrats in the Legislature when they talked of school districts “re-Brucing” to make up for the mill-levy freeze.
The Mesa County commissioners alerted us to the fact that they had a plan to get taxpayers in the rest of the state to subsidize their schools. We’re not spooked, in fact we expect politicians from Mesa County to look for new ways of getting the rest of the state to subsidize them.
The School Finance Act, introduced in the Legislature this week, includes a provision to penalize school districts that re-Bruce in an attempt to reduce their property taxes. The legislation also includes new student-monitoring requirements for school districts that approve changes related to the mill-levy freeze.
It doesn’t penalize the school districts, it just says we won’t make everybody else in the state pay more to make up the difference. If people in Grand Junction want to pay less for their schools why should everyone else in the state have to pay more for their schools? If we reward that kind of thing, they’ll decide not to pay anything for their schools and we’ll have to pay all of it.
It was Colorado Attorney General John Suthers who noticed the measures, buried within the lengthy school finance bill, and alerted the public and GOP lawmakers to them.
Interesting. Colorado’s Attorney General sees his jobs as supporting Republican legislators rather than upholding the laws of the state.
Now, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry is hoping he can strike a compromise with Democrats about the provision.
We hope he’s successful. Voters in school districts around the state should have the option — without penalizing their school districts — of making it clear they never intended to raise property taxes when they approved overrides to TABOR revenue limits.
And there’s nothing in the school finance act that would increase their property taxes. This is about what happens when they lower their property taxes. If people in the school district lower the property taxes they pay for their schools, does everyone else in the state have to pay more to make up the difference.
That was the case for years, until the Legislature passed the mill-levy freeze in 2007. It prevented school districts’ mill levies from dropping as their assessed valuations increased. That effectively raised taxes in 174 school districts statewide. The Supreme Court ruled last month that the mill-levy freeze didn’t violate TABOR.
The reasoning here is that not letting people in Grand Junction lower their property tax rates is actually a property tax increase. They say it’s an increase because if the value of a person’s home goes up, the amount of tax they pay goes up.
Oddly, the Mesa County Commissioners think that’s just fine when it comes to paying property taxes to support their county. They just don’t like it when it applies to paying property taxes to support their schools. What’s the difference? A subsidy. If the Mesa County Commissioners cut their own property taxes, they lose money.
But they were hoping that if they cut their property taxes for schools, we’d force taxpayers in the rest of the state to increase their subsidy of the Grand Junction schools to make up the difference.
In response, the Mesa County commissioners suggested School District 51 should “re-Bruce” — reinstate the provisions that allow the mill levy to drop as the district’s assessed valuation increases.
We argued last week that putting such a question to voters should be a decision of the District 51 School Board, not the county commissioners. And, even though members of the School Board don’t seem inclined to push such an approach, we believe they ought to have the option.
But with language included in the School Finance Act, they would be penalized for doing so.
School funding comes from both local property taxes and the state general fund. The school-finace language says if school districts vote to re-Bruce, they won’t get any additional state funding. Whatever money they cut in local property taxes will be deducted from the school district’s budget.
Is that a radical concept. You cut the taxes you pay so your school district has less money to spend?
Additionally, any school district that votes to re-Bruce would face new requirements for reporting to the state and for boosting student achievement, mandates that other school districts wouldn’t have to meet.
This is something the Senate put into the bill and it does seem unfair. We might take it out in the House.
We’re all for doing things to improve student achievement, but these requirements are clearly punitive, designed to treat school districts differently if they try to overcome the mill-levy freeze.
We don’t think many school districts will try to do that in the current economic crisis. But, with the School Finance Act, the Legislature is telling voters in 174 school districts, “We raised your property taxes without your permission, and we’re going to do everything we can to prevent you from reducing them.”
Not really. The provision they’re talking about said that if the voters in a school district voted to let the district keep the money it gets from the existing property tax rate, the district can keep it.
The provision in this year’s bill just says that if you lower your property taxes we won’t force everyone else in the state to pay more to make up the difference.
That’s not exactly the way to promote trust in government.
Actually, it’s exactly the way to promote trust in government.
April 2, 2009 No Comments
