KRS Staff Get $2.9 Million Salary Increase

Buried on page 64 of the 160 page of the Kentucky Retirement System’s 2006 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) is this little gem.

Salaries and Per Diem went from $10,139,000.00 to $13,041.000.00. That’s about a 30% increase folks. At the same time total operation expenses increased $7,186,000.00, so nearly 3 million of the 7 million in operating expenses was salaries.

So let’s do a little basic math:

The total increase in salaries was: $2,902.000.00
The total number of employees was: 245

Assuming that everyone got the same raise, and we all know the lowest paid clerk got the same raise as Executive Director Bill Hanes, then every employee at Kentucky Retirement Systems got an $11,844.90 raise last year.

Now I don’t know what the average raise was in state government for the same time period, but I would guess that it was a lot less than $11,844.90 and same goes for the checks of retired state employees.

And while we are talking about salary increases I’d really like to know what the 2004 legislature meant by “bonus payment”?

This is from the actuarial cost analysis of House Bill 519 in the 2004 Session of the General Assembly

“Section 7: KRS 61.510(13) is amended to clarify the treatment of bonus payments under the definition of “Creditable compensation.”

Does this mean that Bill Hanes and crew get bonus payments, and if so, for what? Doing their job?

But I guess you can get away with kind of fuzzy accounting when you run your own personnel system and everyone, particularly the legislature, abdicates any responsibility for maintaining checks and balances.