State of Arkansas Announces Full Time Payroll less than Last year, They Think!

            After three years of challenged tax income and the other aspects of the ongoing recession, the State of Arkansas thinks that they have actually reduced the number of state employees! Not a bad direction, wouldn’t you agree?

            The Democrat-Gazette headline of September 6^th screams “State’s full-time payroll shrinks”.

            Per the local paper, “The number of people in full-time jobs on the state payroll went down last fiscal year, something that hasn’t happened in at least 24 years, likely longer”. (Wish I could find an investment with that record of growth; at least 24 years without a down year! Wow!)

            With great expectation and enthusiasm for tax payer dollars saved and frugality revealed on the part of our state government, we devoured the details only to discover, “Officially, the total went up by 95 employees, but errors discovered in the reports of several agencies will result in a net decline of 64.”

            Excuse me but officially the number is up 95, but the individual agencies can’t count the number of their own employees and the real number is down 64? Well, this is the same government over which Governor Beebe reigns as CEO and tolerates that his Finance Dept head, Richard Weiss, can’t count the number of vehicles the state owns, somewhere in the 8,000 area, plus or minus a few hundred or so. So keeping track of whether the state has the official number of 56,517 employees, or the “corrected” number of 56,351 employees is understandably a daunting task. A couple of ideas: count the number of payroll checks for the pay period ending 06/30/2010 and compare to the number of payroll checks for the pay period ending 06/30/2011; or have all employees fall in on the nearest parking lot and do a head count. Oh heck, that last one won’t work, all the parking lots are full of the 8,000 or so state cars.

            Not to toot his own horn but the Governor tells us, …“growth in fiscal 2011 was limited because of ‘budget considerations’ due to flat economy, tax cuts, and low growth in revenue. We didn’t have a wholesale requirement that we are just going to cut, slash, and burn.” Excuse me, somewhere between “up 95 to a down 64” is viewed by the Governor as a “cut, slash, and burn” result? He sounds like an eastern seaboard, pointee-headed, commie-pinko liberal. (In his defense, he was born in a tar-paper shack per his campaign ads, so this probably disqualifies him from the eastern seaboard accusation.) The Governor did admit that, thankfully, “In some selected areas, we actually increased (employees)”. Thank goodness for that. In these tough economic time for us tax payers, it is a relief to learn that at least some areas of state government are running as usual and adding folks to the publicly funded feed trough.

            Comparing the 1991 figure of 38,122 full time state employees to the 2011 figure of 56,517 (yes I’m using the “official” number), the payroll for the state has increased by 18,395 full time employees despite automation, etc. An increase of 48.25%.

            Ask yourself, has your service from the state improved by 48%?

            Let’s put this into dollar terms. The 1991 payroll dollars were $1,259,000,000. Yes, that’s billions. The 2011 payroll dollars were $3,598,000,000; an increase of only $2,339,000,000.00 (yes, that’s billions). So the dollar cost for the state’s payroll is up $185.78% over the same time period.

            Yep, employees up 48%; their payroll costs up 185% over the same time frame! Nice job if you can get one!