Pay Raises Likely to Be Part of Legislature’s Appropriations

Tennessee House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh says instead of the Governor’s recommendation for a two-percent across the board increase for state employees, he’d like to see a three percent raise.

The state employees association says that causes more concern about the issue of compression, where new employees are paid the same as employees who’ve been on the job for years. The association argues that compression isn’t helped by across the board raises.

But House Majority Leader Kim McMillan says the compression issue is being addressed with the 8-million dollars the governor appropriated for extra pay for certain classes of employees.

“So I think you have to look at it, as a total package, you can’t just take out compression and say this addresses the problem. You’ve got to say classification along with the compression adjustment does, hopefully addresses the problem.”

The legislature will be discussing the state’s 26-billion dollar budget this week.