State workers battle to make ends meet

By Tim Talley

OKLAHOMA CITY — It used to cost state worker Thomas Kalayilparampil just $16 to fill up the small Subaru he drives to nursing homes where he works with the families of elderly residents to arrange Medicaid payments.

But two years after Kalayilparampil got his last raise, the cost of filling up his car has jumped to $47 due to skyrocketing gasoline prices. And the 30-year state Department of Human Services employee is feeling the financial strain.

“It’s very hard to make both ends meet,” Kalayilparampil said. The state reimburses employees for the use of their personal vehicles on the job but uses rates set by the Internal Revenue Service that have become inadequate as the price of fuel tops $4 a gallon, he said.

“It’s affecting employees who do field work. You don’t get enough,” Kalayilparampil said. “We cannot take a vacation or go to places. We cannot go out to eat. We have to budget carefully or we won’t even get to work.”

State employees have received only two pay raises in the last seven years — both of them in election years. In this election year, the 10,000-member Oklahoma Public Employees Association sought a $2,700 pay raise that would have cost about $90 million a year to fund.

But Oklahoma lawmakers, citing tight revenues and a slowing economy, did not include a pay raise for the state’s approximately 34,000 employees in the $7.1 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“It makes it very hard to live from payday to payday,” said Debbie Elledge, a 22-year state worker who currently is secretary to the chief medical officer at the state Department of Corrections.

Since the last pay raise in 2006, when state worker pay was increased 5 percent across the board, the consumer price index has risen 11.32 percent, Elledge said. In 2004, workers received a $2,100 annual raise phased in over six months.

Prior to that, worker pay had not been raised since 2000.

“My salary hasn’t kept up with inflation, not even close,” Elledge said. “I’m living off my credit cards at the moment.”

She said she has considered getting another job and has had to have part-time jobs to make ends meet.

“That’s not something I think we ought to have to do. I think the state ought to pay us an amount that will help us to live and not have to supplement our income,” Elledge said.

“It’s kind of a slap in the face that they don’t think we’re worth it.”

The 2007 Annual Compensation Report prepared by the Office of Personnel Management found that state worker salaries are 12 percent below the average wage of workers with similar jobs in the private sector.

State worker pay averaged $34,713 that year while market salaries averaged almost $38,900 — a difference of more than $4,000, according to the report.

“It’s really affecting every aspect of life,” said Ty Todd, a former president of OPEA and a communications manager for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation in Buffalo.

Todd said state worker pay was several years behind inflation when they received their last raise two years ago.

“Now, fuel prices are really hitting hard. We’ve had insurance increases that’s really impacted state employees,” Todd said. “It would be nice if we could see pay raises that just keep us up with the rate of inflation.”

The Governor’s Task Force on State Employee Compensation is studying how to comprehensively compare state employee pay to market employee salaries. Officials say the actuarial study will be more extensive than the OPM report and will try to quantify all benefits received by state employees when compared with market employees.

But Sterling Zearley, executive director of the OPEA, said state workers have become frustrated with state officials who study their compensation instead of raising it. Zearley said OPEA members will be politically active this election season.

“We’re going to be very involved in election campaigns this year,” Zearley said. State workers are conducting interviews with candidates and OPEA will make candidate endorsements this year based on lawmakers’ voting records and the opinions of OPEA members.

“We know who has been helpful and who has not,” Zearley said.