THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 27, 1994 TAG: 9409270311
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
The theory behind pay-for-performance is simple: The better you do your job, the bigger your raise at the end of the year.
But when this year ends, merit pay raises will still be just a theory to many of Virginia's 11,175 constitutional officer employees.
Many of the state's deputy court clerks, sheriffs, treasurers and other officers could have gotten raises as part of a pay-for-performance plan for which the state allocated funds in January.
Only about half of the state's 664 constitutional officers had set up the performance evaluation programs required to get the raises by December. That half will be able to offer their employees raises of up to 6 percent on their annual salary. The other half will not.
``What we've done is created two classes of employees,'' said J. Curtis Fruit, clerk of Virginia Beach Circuit Court.
``The ones who are getting a cost-of-living raise, and the ones, like us, who will get more.''
Why almost half of the state's officers did not have a performance evaluation plan ready to go when the legislature convened to budget the funds is a mystery to Fruit, who was president of the Virginia Court Clerks Association last year.
After urging court clerks throughout the fall of 1993 to start an evaluation plan, Fruit and other clerks received a survey form from the state in January asking how many of them actually had such programs working in their offices.
``If you had one, you checked the yes box. If you didn't have one, you checked the no box,'' Fruit said.
What Fruit didn't realize was that those survey results would determine who got funded.
Lillie M. Hart, clerk of the Circuit Court for Chesapeake, was one of 53 clerks who checked the ``no'' box.
``Everyone was caught off-guard,'' said Hart, whose 25 employees will only get the standard 2.25 percent cost-of-living raise in December.
No merit pay raises have been granted to constitutional office employees since 1991, when former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder declared a freeze on raises.
Hart said she had begun implementing a program when she learned in March that she had missed the Feb. 1 cutoff date.
Though the deputy clerks under Hart declined to comment to the press, at least 15 called state Sen. Fred Quayle to find out who was responsible and how to fix it.
``As far as I understand it, it was the constitutional officers' responsibility to submit the plan,'' Quayle said.
Quayle said he would try to get a budget amendment passed that would allocate more funds for merit pay raises in May or June. The amendment will not include funds for the raises employees will miss this year.
According to the survey done by the State Compensation Board, some constitutional officers were aware of the timetable and acted.
``We started in September of 1993 urging our treasurers,'' said Ronald H. Williams, Suffolk's treasurer.
While only 43 percent of clerks implemented evaluation programs by Feb. 1, 85 percent of treasurers had them in place by then.
``We knew that if the item passed, treasurers would have to have a system of evaluation in place, at the latest (by) January 1994 to get raises.''
Williams, who helped spearhead the pay-for-performance effort, said administrative hassles may be one reason why some officers did not act as quickly.
``Depending on the number of employees you have, how complicated the system is, it can add up to a burden,'' Williams said. by CNB