Our new frugal Governor Dennis Daugaard is raising his lieutenant's pay 578%. As part-time lieutenant governor, Daugaard made $17,699. As governor, Daugaard is elevating the lieutenant's position to full-time status and paying Matt Michels $120,000 to do the job.
Ms. Golden goes easy on her fellow Republicans, noting that Daugaard is cutting more executive salaries in Pierre (including his own!) than he's raising. I might go easy, too. Looking at the job itself, the vice-CEO in an organization with thousands of employees providing vital services to 800,000 people has pretty important responsibilities. In general, to lure a talented guy away from a better-paying job as lawyer for a big hospital (law and health care---a serious convergence of big money!), you usually have to pay good money. If Daugaard is going to work Michels six times harder than Rounds worked Daugaard in the looie's seat, great: let's pay Michels accordingly.
I might even rationalize the odd inversion that has the lieutenant making $22,000 more than the governor. Daugaard is cutting his own pay from $115,331 to $98,000. Does that mean Daugaard plans to do 18% less work than Michels? I do so want to keep teasing Denny about going to the lake... but I'm willing to entertain the notion that he's just the kind of boss who settles for less in his pocket and believes in sharing the wealth with others who serve.
But if we step away from the personalities and look at labor and economics in general, sextupled looie's pay may pose a problem. We measure the value of work with the money we pay for it. It's an imperfect measure (we pay moms nothing), but over most of the economy, money is the best proxy for value we have. Governor Daugaard is making a fiscal choice that places a high value on Lt. Gov. Michels's labor. He's valuing that labor more than any of our neighboring states do. Minnesota's looie gets $78,197. At $120,000, our lieutenant governor's pay will be the twelfth-highest in the nation.
This same administration is turning to the 9000 or so public school teachers of this state and asking them to accept a budget cut. Our teachers have been 51st in the nation for salary for years; Pierre may propose cuts equivalent to the current salaries of 1500 teachers. Such fiscal choices indicate our leaders do not value the labor of those teachers.
I value the work that public officials do. They should be paid a salary commensurate to the effort they have to make and the awesome responsibility they bear to wield power justly and effectively. That applies to everyone on the public payroll, from the governor and his lieutenant on down to your local English teacher.
Governor Daugaard is asking Matt Michels to do more as lieutenant governor and paying him more to match. That's fine. South Dakota's public school teachers have been asked to do more for years---more certification hoops, more standards, more No Child Left Behind, more social instruction---without any such proportionate boost in pay and in utter disproportion to the value they would receive in competing states and competing fields. That's not fine.
If we can find a 587% raise for one valuable public servant in the midst of a fiscal crisis, we can find a 5.87% raise for some other valued public servants, our K-12 teachers.
new boss same as the old boss.....
Can we refer the budget to a vote of the people?
This sure looks bad -- not a good start for the guy I voted for. Political tone-deafness? Beats me.
While I agree with the sentiments, the 587% vs 5.87% is a poor comparison tool. Keep your apples and your oranges separate.
Giving every teacher a 5.87% increase is a considerable amount of money - it'd only take about 60 teachers' raises to account for Michel's full salary (assuming average salary of $34,709). To give all 9,863 teachers in SD a 5.87% raise would mean finding an additional $20,095,057
Considering teachers haven't received raises for a couple years, and aren't likely to for FY11 and 12, I'm inclined to support increasing my taxes to pay for increased wages. If we spread the burden among every man, woman and child (all 814,180 of us), that's $25 per warm body in taxes.
It's easier to support spending on education if it's thought of as an economic policy rather than a social policy, but we need the right outcome measures (achievement, competence, college completion, salary, etc.). Dollars spent is a poor metric.
Food for thought.
-WB
Good food, Wayne! Yes, 5.87% is an arbitrary number, and raising all teacher salaries by any amount would take more fiscal resources and will than changing the Lt. Gov. position responsibilities and salary. But I think there's still a valid principal to be made in the comparison. If we can recognize the increased value of a job in the midst of hard economic times for one man, why can we not recognize the increased value of what teachers do and find the resources to increase our support for their work as well? How much is the work of a teacher worth compared to the work of a Lt. Gov.?