State, university salary study likely Story prompts call for committee

AUGUSTA – Gov. John Baldacci says the state should study what it is paying its employees to determine if there are ways to save money to help provide tax relief in future years.

“We ought to put a group together to look at how Maine stacks up against other [similar] states,” he said. “I haven’t talked with my staff about it yet, but it should be done.”

Baldacci said a story in the Bangor Daily News published last weekend was “eye opening” as it listed many of the top salaries paid either by the state and or by the state’s higher education facilities such as the University of Maine System.

“I’d like to know how to get a job like the former chancellor has,” he joked. Joseph Westphal’s tenure as head of the University of Maine System ended June 30 and he is now a full time professor with a salary of $208,382 a year. The average University of Maine professor earned $79,700 last year and the governor makes $69,992 a year.

“We have got to do everything we can to lower the cost of state government,” Baldacci said. “That way we can provide tax relief to Mainers. We have just begun to scratch the surface on reorganizing the way government does business.”

Several of the Legislature’s leaders agree with Baldacci. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, said as the head of the executive branch of government the governor should be looking at all ways to improve efficiencies in state government.

“The governor hires a lot of those senior people that run agencies,” she said. “It makes sense for him to do a study.”

But Pingree cautioned that the state has to maintain competitive salaries and benefits to attract the “smart, competent” people needed to run complex state agencies. Her GOP counterpart, House Minority Leader Josh Tardy, R-Newport, said the study needs to go beyond salaries to the value of benefits that state workers receive.

“It needs to be studied in a comprehensive manner, not only to identify if a problem exists – and it may very well exist – but what a reasonable and legal solution would be,” he said.

Tardy said some state benefits are set by statute, but some are the result of collective bargaining with state workers’ unions. He said having a comprehensive study that compares Maine to other similar sized states as well as the private sector in Maine would help state policy makers.

Senate Minority Leader Carol Weston, R-Montville, said she also was surprised at the salaries published last weekend, but said a true comparative study needs to consider all benefits such as health insurance and retirement that state workers receive.

“We already know some of that information, it is available,” she said, “and we know that public sector jobs are growing faster than private sector jobs and that should be part of what is looked at in the study.”

Weston said when private sector workers are seeing cuts in benefits, it is hard to justify public sector workers receiving better benefits. She said with many Mainers struggling to pay the bills, it is not fair that they are hit with a high tax burden to pay for the benefits that state workers are receiving.

“The governor is key to all of this,” she said. “He has to be the one to take the lead.”

Senate President Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, agrees the governor should conduct a salary study and that it should be a comprehensive “apples to apples” study, but she too cautioned that what may appear as high salaries to many Mainers, as well as to her, may be needed.

“You are competing for faculty at the university on a national and international basis,” she said. “I would say you have to remember you get what you pay for and we have to pay competitive salaries to be competitive.”

All of the leaders agree that any study the Baldacci administration does on salaries will help other groups that are seeking savings in the state budget.

The Appropriations Committee needs to find $10.1 million in savings to bring the second year of the two-year budget into balance. The panel is scheduled to meet at least monthly through the summer and fall.

Another group, yet to be appointed by Edmonds and House Speaker Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, is the Prosperity Committee that is supposed to find savings in state spending that can be used to invest in programs aimed at increasing jobs in the private sector.