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Editor’s Note: In 1992 the Bangor Daily News published a large sampling of salaries paid to state employees. The BDN recently decided to revisit how much Maine is paying the people who run the state and its many programs and how those salaries compare to those in other states.
The legislative session drew to a close last month after yet another frantic struggle to balance the budget. And even though the state is operating under a hiring freeze, the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee may take a closer look at state employees’ salaries to reach its goal of reducing $10.1 million in state spending by next session.
“We’ll be looking at the organizations of state government, the programs, and we may be looking at salaries and the number of employees, asking, ‘Are there functions that could be performed in different departments?'” Rep. Jeremy R. Fischer, D-Presque Isle, and the committee’s House chairman, said in a recent interview.
The Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that in 2005, the last year for which statistics were available, Maine had 26,248 state jobs, a ratio of one job for every 50 residents. Neighboring New Hampshire had a slightly lower ratio, with one job for every 54 residents, and Vermont had a higher ratio, with one job for every 39 residents.
Maine state spending on employee salaries and wages, not including benefits such as medical insurance, totaled $945.5 million in 2005, according to the federal bureau. New Hampshire spent $806.5 million on state employee pay that year and Vermont spent $671.9 million.
Maine’s mean, or average, state employee salary based on total spending and number of jobs was $36,000 in 2005. New Hampshire’s mean salary was $33,600, and Vermont’s was $41,800 for the same year. Median, or midpoint, figures were not available.
But while some say Maine is overpaying its university and executive, judicial and legislative branch employees, others say the state is hardly paying them adequately.
When compared to other northern New England states, fiscal year 2006-2007 salaries of the state’s leaders were generally lower:
. Gov. John Baldacci was paid $69,992, the lowest salary of any governor in the U.S. New Hampshire’s governor earned $108,990, and the governor of Vermont received $143,957, according to the Council of State Governments.
. Robert Kennedy, president of the University of Maine, earned $202,313, while the president of the University of New Hampshire received $317,000 and the president of the University of Vermont received $301,000.
. Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe earned $90,438, while Vermont’s attorney general received $109,292, and New Hampshire’s attorney general was paid $105,396.
. Margaret Greenwald, the state’s chief medical examiner, earned $167,648, significantly more than the chief medical examiners in New Hampshire, $131,148, and Vermont, $137,550.
. Cabinet-level commissioners in all three states earned similar amounts last year. The median, or midpoint, commissioner salary in Maine was $100,672, New Hampshire’s was $99,778, and Vermont’s was lowest, at $94,994.
. State senators and representatives in Maine earned $12,713 in the first regular session of 2007 and will earn an estimated $9,254 in the second, shorter session of 2008. They receive the following benefits when in office: health and dental insurance; an allowance of between $1,500 and $2,000 a session for providing services to constituents; participation in the Maine State Legislative Retirement System; and travel, meal and lodging expense reimbursement for time spent in Augusta. The benefits terminate when the legislator leaves office.
New Hampshire state representatives and senators receive a flat $100 per session and mileage reimbursement.
In Vermont, state representatives and senators receive $589 a week when the Legislature is in session in addition to mileage, meals and lodging reimbursement. The most recent session lasted 18 weeks, so legislators received $10,602.
Nine of Maine’s top 10 highest-paid employees work within the University of Maine System. At the top of the list, former University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal is now a full-time professor earning $208,382 a year.
But the average UMaine professor earns significantly less than Westphal and much less than public university professors in neighboring states. At UMaine, the average full-time professor earned $79,700 last year, while professors at University of New Hampshire and University of Vermont on average received $99,700 and $95,300, respectively.
James Breece, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at UMaine, said the university must compete with other states to attract excellent faculty members, whose job descriptions include teaching and advising students, publishing research, editing academic journals, attending conferences, providing guidance and consultation to the state government, and volunteering with professional organizations.
Not every professorial candidate will accept Maine’s slightly lower pay scale, and it is a hurdle the university faces as it tries to build better academic and research programs, Breece said.
“In some instances people have to take a pay cut to come here, but they want to be a part of that thriving, energetic atmosphere,” Breece said.
Each faculty member can be considered an investment, as each works to attract students and government and private-sector grants and contracts to the school. Return has been high, Breece said.
For example, for every dollar the state has invested in UMaine’s Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center in the last five years, it has attracted $7 in grants and contracts. During the 2006-07 fiscal year, the center employed 39 full-time employees and 117 students, including 30 graduate students.
“That’s all hinged on quality faculty,” Breece said.
The money the state contributes to the UMaine System accounts for slightly more than a quarter of the system’s $650 million annual budget. The rest comes from tuition and fees, private donations, grants and contracts, and revenues from university merchandise and ticket sales. About half the university system’s budget is spent on wages and salaries for its thousands of employees.
Scott Moody, chief economist with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which advocates a decrease in taxes and government spending, said he is in the process of examining the university system, which he suspects is teeming with unnecessary employees.
But Moody said state employee benefits packages are the real issue of excess when it comes to government spending on employees. Moody referred to a report his organization released in June, titled “State Government Gravy Train.” Comparing mean private and public sector spending on employee benefits such as pensions and medical and dental insurance, the report estimated state government spending to be 120 percent higher than private sector employer spending on benefits. “We’ve accrued this huge liability that is unfunded,” Moody said, referring to benefits promised to current and retired state workers. “We’ve promised state government workers that we will pay into their retirement, but we haven’t fully funded it.”
The Maine State Retirement System said the employee pension fund now contains about 70 percent of what it will need to fund pensions it has promised. The fund is awaiting the government’s repayment of a loan it took from the fund in the early 1990s, a retirement system spokesman said.
Retirement programs for state employees vary depending on the branch of government, but each retirement plan requires both employee and state contributions.
Of the 743 full-time employees of the state community college system, 30 employees earned more than $75,000 in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. System President John Fitzsimmons was the top-paid employee in the system, earning $150,070.
Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Leigh I. Saufley has been an outspoken advocate for higher pay for the state’s judges. Maine’s 34 District Court judges each earned $105,300 in the last fiscal year.
“Top members of the legal field in Maine are making many, many times more than that,” she said.
Saufley earned $129,850 last year, just $75 less than her counterpart in Vermont but almost $8,000 less than the supreme judicial court chief justice of New Hampshire.
The Judicial Compensation Commission released a report in March on state judicial branch salaries, recommending raises of 18 percent to 19 percent for each judge and justice.
Ed Cervone, a policy analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy and author of the report “State of Working Maine 2005,” cautions against the assumption that state employees are overpaid. Cervone said he used to be a state and federal employee and believes most state workers are highly trained and educated.
“Just looking at their salaries, it does very little to describe what’s behind it. … You have to pay for that person’s master’s degree, or legal degree or the years of experience that are required for those positions,” Cervone said.
He said the best process by which to assess state workers’ salaries is to compare each position with the salary of a comparable one in the private sector.
“It would take awhile to figure that out,” Cervone said.
Rep. Fischer also believes comparing individual public and private sector positions is the best way to decide whether state employees are overpaid or underpaid. And despite the current hiring freeze and new law to reduce the 152 Maine school administrative systems to no more than 80 by 2009, Fischer is confident there is room to cut more spending.
“We think we can find efficiencies of $10.1 million by looking at the organizations of state government and the programs,” he said.
GRAPHIC: Listing of more than 950 jobs paying $75,000 and more. See pdf images of pages in the news library archive or consult the library microfilm for complete listing.
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