Panel OKs pay bump for Crime Lab job

A legislative panel on Tuesday endorsed the state Department of Public Safety’s request to pay the maximum-authorized salary of $270,455 a year for the state Crime Laboratory’s chief medical examiner post, to help attract well-qualified candidates.

The salary range for the vacant chief medical examiner post is $175,620 to $270,455 a year. The post has been vacant since July, said Tony Robinson, personnel review administrator for the Bureau of Legislative Research.

Kermit Channell, Crime Laboratory executive director, said the former chief medical examiner, Charles P. Kokes, intended to retire, but Channel convinced him to remain as an associate medical examiner. Kokes’ $221,669-a-year salary didn’t change with his new post.

The Crime Laboratory is part of the Department of Public Safety under Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s reorganization of state government reducing the number of state agencies reporting to him from 42 to 15.

The personnel subcommittee also delayed action until next month on the Department of Transformation and Shared Services’ request to surrender a vacant energy conservative manager post and create an engineer position.

Lawmakers said they want more information about the new position, which state officials said would help agencies assess building space needs.

The chief medical examiner manages autopsy activities at the lab, said Kay Barnhill, state personnel administrator, in a letter to the personnel subcommittee.

“Along with overseeing personnel performing pathological and toxicological analysis and determining cause of death, this classification will also be responsible for performing autopsies and completing death certificates,” Barnhill wrote.

Channell said in a letter to Barnhill paying the maximum-authorized salary for the position “will enable us to be competitive with our neighboring states in order to attract a well-qualified candidate.”

For example, Memphis, Tenn., is looking for a chief medical examiner at a salary of $300,000 a year and hasn’t filled the position yet, he said.

Channell said he hasn’t received any applicants for position, and it’s a problem across the nation.

“There just aren’t many out there. There is less than 400 board-certified forensic pathologists,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we have a vacancy with our associate medical examiner that has been over a year and a half, so it is becoming critical for the state and we are trying to do everything we can to make sure that we are supplying those services and death certificates that our citizens need.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we are definitely getting somebody at $270,000, but I am hoping that we can at least recruit some decent candidates and bring them in and just go from there. At this point, that’s the best I can do,” Channell said. The subcommittee recommended the Legislative Council, which meets Friday, approve the request.

The Department of Transformation and Shared Services’ request to surrender a vacant energy conservation manager post — with a salary range of $36,155 to $52,424 a year — and create an engineer post with a salary range of $50,222 to $72,821 a year triggered questions from lawmakers.

The Division of Building Authority is part of the department under Hutchinson’s agency reorganization.

The authority “is at the point that this ‘engineer’ position would improve expediency/efficiencies of capital project reviews for other state agencies (as well as our own) and relief to our Design Review Section,” division Director Ann Laidlaw said in a letter to department Chief of Staff Ann Purvis.

The engineer position doesn’t require a professional license, but requires education and experience in an engineering or related field, Laidlaw wrote. The anticipated budgetary cost of the new engineer position is $14,067, said Barnhill.

But a subcommittee co-chairman, Rep. Jim Wooten, R-Beebe, said, “We got some double talk here. We going to talk about $14,000 or we going to talk about $50,000? … From a legislative standpoint we are looking for real savings,” he said. The request was delayed until the committee’s next meeting.

In response to a question from Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, about cost savings under the reorganization, department Secretary Amy Fecher said a 2019 law sponsored by Rep. Rick Beck, R-Cedar Ridge, will require all 15 cabinet secretaries to provide reports to lawmakers two weeks before the start of the fiscal legislative session in April about how they will be able to save 1% of their general revenue budgets and “if they are not able to do that, an answer as to why.”

Wooten said, “It has been brought to my attention that there is not going to be a lot of remodeling” at the Verizon Building 4 in Little Rock’s Riverdale neighborhood where the new state Department of Commerce will be located, “and we got the building, the parking lot and all the furniture.

“And they are not going to spend a lot of money and some of the agencies may be cramped. What are you going to do with their furniture?” he asked.

Fecher said, “It is all state property now and so it will be used by state employees. Some people will use the furniture that there is …. Some will be bringing their furniture in from the area where they are now if they own it. It will all be used by state employees or go to” marketing and redistribution, she said. •