ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 13, 1996 TAG: 9611130046
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Gov. George Allen has weighed in on the side of opponents, including Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, of a new pay plan that would have delayed checks to the state's some 100,000 employees next year.
Shuler and Del. George Grayson, D-Williamsburg, had planned to introduce emergency legislation to repeal the so-called "lag pay" plan passed near the close of the 1996 General Assembly.
Now, Allen has sent a letter received Saturday by most state employees saying the new payroll system should not be implemented as now planned.
Instead, he will introduce emergency legislation at the start of the 1997 General Assembly substituting a plan to pay state employees every other Friday. Pay will still come after work is performed, as in the controversial lag pay plan, but a transition payment equal to three work days will be added when the changeover occurs in mid-1997 to make sure the change is not disruptive, Allen wrote.
"While I have read the general thrust of the governor's plan to use a biweekly pay schedule," Shuler said Tuesday, "I have not seen the details of the legislation so I will withhold my initial judgement. I do hope the state employees in my district will consider this plan and let me know their assessment of the governor's proposal."
Shuler's district includes thousands of state employees at Virginia Tech and Radford University. The New River Valley as a whole has one of the highest concentrations of state employees as a segment of the local economy outside of Richmond.
The "lag pay" plan would have delayed checks so that state employees would get only 23 twice-a-month checks instead of the customary 24 checks during 1997. The idea was to generate cost savings to help pay for a 4.35 percent cost-of-living pay increase effective next month.
John Bennett, staff director for the Senate Finance Committee, estimated earlier that the lag pay plan would save the state about $75 million in 1997, but state pay raises will take $140 million.
Under Allen's new plan, state employees would actually see more checks than they do now. Because two months of each year have three Fridays, they would get 26 checks per year once the plan is fully implemented. The amounts would be slightly smaller so annual gross pay would stay the same.
The traditional twice-a-month paychecks would continue through June. The last one, covering the last half of June, would come July 1. At that time, employees also would get the three-day transition payment which will slightly increase each employee's take-home pay for 1997.
The new biweekly plan would start with paychecks received July 18, covering work performed from June 30 through July 11. That will also be the start of paychecks on alternating Fridays.
Allen met Oct. 16, after Shuler and Grayson announced their emergency legislation plan, with Speaker of the House Thomas Moss, D-Norfolk, and state Senate President pro tempore Stanley C. Walker, D-Norfolk. Other meetings followed among the two legislators and their staffs with state Secretary of Finance Ron Tillett.
"State employees are concerned, and rightly so, with the current plan for implementing lag pay," Allen said in a separate letter last week to Moss and Walker. "After discussing these concerns with various state employees, as well as with some members of the General Assembly, I believe the level of employee distress being caused by the current lag pay plan is sufficient to justify revisiting this issue during the 1997 session. ... Although the proper, businesslike efficiencies of 'lagging' the state payroll must be achieved, there are other, less disruptive means to arrive at this goal."
Shuler said he was pleased to learn the governor and House and Senate leaders seem to agree that the lag pay plan is flawed and creates unnecessary hardship for state workers.
"That is why I earlier proposed legislation to rescind the lag pay," he said. "I trust we can move quickly to repeal this onerous policy within the first days of the 1997 General Assembly. The support of the governor and members of the Appropriations and Finance committees will be extremely important in expediting this legislative matter."
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