STATE’S pay-plan retool backed by panel.

The Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee on Tuesday endorsed an overhaul of the pay plan for about 25,000 full-time state workers that officials project will cost about $57 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

In a voice vote, the committee recommended approval of Senate Bill 289 by Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs.

About $24 million of the increased cost of the overhaul in fiscal 2018 is projected to come from general revenue, with the remainder coming from other state government revenue sources, Department of Finance and Administration spokesman Jake Bleed said after the meeting.

To finance the implementation of the overhauled pay plan, agencies “will utilize accrued savings from efficiencies and attrition, and if this is not sufficient, they may request merit adjustment funds,” Bleed said.

About 54 percent of these full-time employees would get pay raises of more than 1 percent each to enable them to reach the new minimum salaries for their positions, and the rest would get 1 percent raises, the state’s personnel director, Kay Barnhill, has said. A 1 percent cost-of-living raise would cost about $6 million a year in general revenue, Bleed said.

State employees aren’t getting cost-of-living raises in the current fiscal year, 2017.

Asked about the merits of approving this overhaul for fiscal 2018, at a time when net general revenue available to agencies is $57 million below forecast so far in fiscal 2017, Hester said, “The budgeting process is all about priorities.

“What we are saying as the Legislature is, it is a priority to correct some of the wrongs in our current pay plan,” Hester said in an interview.

“I think that our social workers with [the Department of Human Services], our family care workers are drastically underpaid. We are having a hard time keeping good [ employees] and recruiting qualified employees for those positions. Same thing with the Department of Corrections, our guys that are [working] in jail risking their lives to keep us safe every day,” he said.

Hester said he thinks tax collections during the rest of fiscal 2017 “will get a lot better,” and lawmakers could consider reducing funding for other programs.

The current pay plan was adopted in 2009 and the labor market has changed dramatically since then, Barnhill said. She also said that to get more money under the current system, employees get promoted to jobs for which they are unsuited, and that there is no mechanism to increase pay for someone who performs increased duties.

Some of the larger raises would be in entry-level positions. The plan overhaul would benefit workers such as family service workers, program eligibility specialists, registered nurses, residential care assistants, correctional officers and state troopers, according to state records.

For instance, the entry-level wage for a program eligibility specialist at the Department of Human Services is $27,858; the proposed plan would raise it to $36,155.

The entry-level wage of a residential-care assistant would go from $ 18,855 to $22,000. A correctional officer 1 position has an entry-level salary of $26,531 and would rise to $29,046 under the proposal.

In September, state officials told lawmakers that they want to begin rewarding employees with merit pay raises that increase their base salaries, rather than continue using one-time bonuses as they have done for the past several years.

The proposed plan wouldn’t cover employees at the state’s colleges and universities.

The state would create four compensation “tables” to replace the current two tables. There would be a general salary table, information technology salary table, medical professional salary table and senior executive salary table.

The general salary table would range from $22,000 to $140,592, while the information technology table would range from $33,403 to $161,681, the medical professional table would range from $63,830 to $270,455 and the senior executive table would range from $108,110 to $201,700.