Elected officials and many government employees who aren’t represented by unions will not get bonuses and raises in the next fiscal year as the state struggles to address budget shortfalls related to the coronavirus crisis.
While members of the Vermont State Employees’ Association will get the pay increases set in the most recent contract negotiations for fiscal year 2021, the Scott administration is planning to postpone a new proposed paid leave program for state workers.
The pay freeze will affect exempt state employees, including people who work in the offices of the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the auditor, the attorney general and the administration. The change will eliminate a $1,400 bonus and pay raises.
The governor also supports forgoing any personal pay raises, Beth Fastiggi, commissioner of the Department of Human Resources, told lawmakers in the House Government Operations Committee Thursday. In 2019, Gov. Phil Scott earned $178,274 according to the Council of State Governments.
“I just think to get a pay raise in this situation … I just think is not an appropriate time for an appointed official to be getting a pay raise,” Fastiggi told lawmakers.
Secretary of the Administration Susanne Young sent out a memo last week to employees announcing the change, Fastiggi said in committee.
“It is difficult to justify an extension of the pay increases on July 1 in light of not only our own budget challenges, but also the current environment of loss and suffering being felt so deeply by Vermonters, our communities and local businesses across the State,” Young wrote in the memo.
In an interview, Fastiggi said she does not know if a pay and bonus freeze will also be instituted in fiscal year 2022.
Fastiggi said the pay freeze will save the state about $3 million across most of the impacted state offices, though she didn’t have data for the savings in the Secretary of State’s Office. It will affect 645 employees in the executive branch.
Fastiggi told lawmakers that the paid leave program the governor quietly introduced to the state employees’ contract deal last fall is also being suspended. Under the plan, Vermont’s 8,500 state employees would receive six weeks of paid leave, and form an insurance pool that other businesses and employees could join voluntarily.
Democratic lawmakers have attempted and failed to pass their own more expansive statewide paid leave program.
Fastiggi said that due to Covid-19, the state has not been able to identify a provider that could meet the state’s timeline to implement the program, which was supposed to begin in the second half of fiscal year 2021. Now it’ll be pushed back until 2022.
The pay freeze won’t apply to most unionized state workers.
The Scott administration still supports the pay increases in the contract it reached last fall with Vermont State Employees’ Association, which represents more than 6,000 workers.
Under that contract, which covers the next two fiscal years, unionized employees will receive one-time $1,400 lump sum payments at the beginning of the upcoming fiscal year, and 2.25% raises in fiscal year 2022.
Steve Howard, the executive director of the union, said that the governor’s ongoing support for the contract signals that Scott believes “all state employees are essential employees.”
But Howard said that state employees still want to see a paid family leave program next year, however, and that the Scott administration has an “obligation” to put it in place.
“We were happy to accept their proposal, it was their proposal,” Howard said of the paid family leave program. “And we are going to work with them to see that state employees receive that benefit.”
Xander Landen contributed reporting.
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