ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A state plan to delay salary checks to its 100,000 employees for two weeks may be stopped by emergency legislation.
Dels. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, and George Grayson, D-Williamsburg, said Friday that they will prefile their bill before the Jan. 8 start of the 1997 General Assembly. It will include an emergency clause making it effective as soon as it is passed by both chambers and signed by Gov. George Allen.
Their bill would repeal the so-called lagged-pay plan passed by the General Assembly in the final hours of its 1996 session.
That plan would delay checks starting in 1997 so that state employees would end up receiving 23 two-week salary checks next year instead of the usual 24.
"While most employees who make $40,000 or more could probably get by on one less paycheck," Shuler and Grayson said in a joint statement, "our concern lies with the women and men in lower job classifications, some of whom earn less than $12,000, who by necessity live from paycheck to paycheck. Delaying their pay, even several days, could well prevent buying food for their families, paying for child care or making rent and loan payments."
The legislators pointed out that a lag in pay times also "produces problems with automatic withdrawal payments for mortgages, cars and other large purchases. As initially proposed, the lagged-pay is promising to create a month-to-month headache."
State employees have been unhappy about the plan. Some of them grumbled audibly when it was mentioned by Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen in a speech Sept. 26 to university employees on a variety of topics, even though he said there seemed a good chance the plan would be eliminated.
Both lawmakers represent districts that are heavy with state employees: Shuler in the Blacksburg area with Tech and Radford University; and Grayson with the College of William and Mary and Eastern State Hospital.
The heads of the Senate Finance Committee and House Appropriations Committee have said they are willing to reconsider the plan, Shuler said. "This legislation is our only alternative and our best effort to change an inequitable situation," he said.
With early committee hearings and majority support in the General Assembly for repeal of the plan, Shuler and Grayson said they believe their bill could go into effect before any state employees have their checks delayed next year.
John Bennett, staff director for the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday that the idea behind the plan was not to save money but make the payroll system more efficient. The lagged-pay plan would save the state about $75 million in 1997, he said, but state pay raises of $140 million would more than eat that up.
Bennett had not heard about the Shuler-Grayson plan to scuttle the plan. "You could probably strike everything I said, then," he said after being advised of it.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) SHULER. color.by CNB