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Dayton, Bakk at odds over pay raises

DFL leaders looking past dispute to try to work together for state residents

Tom Klein
Posted 2/19/15

ST. PAUL – At a news conference on Monday Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, tried to downplay a spat with Gov. Mark Dayton over pay increases for commissioners.

Dayton, upset by a …

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Dayton, Bakk at odds over pay raises

DFL leaders looking past dispute to try to work together for state residents

Posted

ST. PAUL – At a news conference on Monday Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, tried to downplay a spat with Gov. Mark Dayton over pay increases for commissioners.

Dayton, upset by a Senate motion that would prevent the governor from enacting the pay increases until July 1, lashed out at Bakk during a press conference last week.

He alleged that Bakk “stabbed me in the back” and claimed Bakk’s maneuver came without warning.

“I certainly learned a brutal lesson today that I can’t trust him, can’t believe what he says to me, and that he connives behind my back,” said Dayton at the conference. He added that he would no longer meet with Bakk without others present.

Bakk, however, told reporters on Monday that he thinks he and Dayton still have a good working relationship. He added he hoped to discuss the disagreement with the governor this week.

“There is always another issue to try to work through after one disagreement where you need to find common ground,” Bakk said. “So, that is kind of my core leadership principle, I think, to not let any disputes become personal in nature.”

Dayton declined further comment on the tiff with Bakk, but said they both have a job to do for the people of Minnesota. “It’s imperative that we do that constructively together and that’s my expectation.”

Cabinet pay raises

At the heart of the dispute is Dayton’s recent decision to hike pay for 23 of his cabinet officers by as much as $35,000 a year. In total the raises amount to about $800,000 a year in additional state spending.

Dayton got the authority to increase the salaries from a 2013 law change after a bi-partisan committee said the ceiling on pay for commissioners should be lifted, after department heads had gone 12 years without salary increases.

Dayton’s proposal drew harsh criticism from Republicans. Bakk, who favored phasing in the salary increases in smaller increments, successfully pushed through a Senate amendment to delay the raises until July 1. That prompted Dayton’s tirade, because the governor believed he had an agreement with Bakk to resolve the matter a different way.

Bakk said he laid out several possible scenarios on how the Senate would respond to the pay raises to Dayton the day before the vote.

“The governor wasn’t asked to pick one of the options that I laid out to him,” Bakk said. But he bristled at Dayton’s description that he was “blindsided.”

Salaries in

perspective

Currently, the most a Minnesota commissioner can earn is $119,577. That’s less than their counterparts in most neighboring states receive and well below the pay for some school superintendents in Minnesota and the heads of many other state boards with far fewer staff members and responsibilities.

Under Dayton’s proposed increases, the most a commissioner would earn is $154,992. That would put commissioner’s salaries roughly on par with what they were back in 2000, once adjusted for inflation. However, because of the downturn in the economy, average wages throughout the economy haven’t necessarily kept pace with rising costs. Over the last dozen years, salaries have gone up about 15.7 percent, which would be less than the maximum proposed by the governor.

Comparisons with other states, however, show Minnesota commissioner salaries are lower than those paid to their counterparts in the Midwest with few exceptions. As an example, the state’s education commissioner’s salary would climb to $150,002 under Dayton’s proposal. That would still leave the commissioner’s salary below the national median for education commissioners. In other cases, commissioners’ salaries would be above the national median.

Dayton argues that the pay increases are merited because commissioners’ salaries have not kept pace with inflation and if the state continues to fall behind, it will have difficulty attracting quality applicants for public service jobs.

“Mid-level managers at many Minnesota companies earn more than my commissioners, who manage large budgets and more employees,” Dayton wrote in a letter to legislators. “People who choose public service should expect to earn less than they would in the private sector; however, it is still instructive to compare their incomes and responsibilities.”

While the state competes against the private sector for talent, it also competes against local units of government in Minnesota, which often pay significantly more than the state for top administrators. For example, according to Minnesota Management and Budget, city managers in dozens of metro area suburbs earn in excess of $140,000 a year, and hundreds of city positions across the state pay well over $110,000. Top county administrators are also better-compensated. St. Louis County’s administrator, Kevin Gray, for example, earned $151,486 in 2012.

Ironically, Bakk said the pay raises are likely justified, but phasing them in would be more palatable to the public.

Meanwhile, the pay dispute is now enmeshed with a stopgap spending bill moving through the legislative process. Dayton has threatened to veto the bill if it includes the pay raise delay. The House is expected to act on the bill on Thursday.

One possibility is a House compromise that would call for Dayton to trim spending in the respective departments to offset the commissioners’ salary increases. The governor has indicated he is willing to consider that option.