Officials in Gov. Jim Doyle’s cabinet will not accept a 2 percent pay raise amid a budget shortfall of $5.7 billion, the administration said Tuesday.
Doyle spokesperson Carla Vigue said the Democratic governor asked the Department of Administration to direct the cabinet to do so.
In a memo released Tuesday, Secretary of Administration Michael Morgan told Doyle’s 16-member cabinet to forgo their raise, scheduled to take effect in June.
“We have all agreed to take this step because, as leaders of this Administration, we need to send a message to the working families in our state who have been hit by the national economic recession,” Morgan wrote in the memo dated Monday.
The move will save the state roughly $39,000 each year, which will remain in the general fund.
Morgan is forfeiting the most. At $136,944 a year, he is the best-paid secretary and was due for an increase of $2,739. Tourism Secretary Kelli Trumble, the lowest paid secretary at $108,501, would have had her salary increase by $2,170.
In the original budget plan, all state employees were to have a 1 percent salary increase followed by another 1 percent in June. The plan was altered to have a 2 percent raise in June to save $25 million.
Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, the ranking Republican on the Joint Finance Committee, said while he thinks the government cutting back is a good sign to the taxpayers, he hopes Doyle’s move was “more than symbolic.”
“I’d hope we’d focus that on more than just a dozen or so people for a simple press release,” Vos said. “We should be serious about it and not do it just for symbolism.”
Doyle is expected to announce his plan for the 2009-11 biennium budget sometime next week.
Thousands of state and University of Wisconsin System employees are supposed to still receive a 2 percent increase in June. Vigue said she is unsure if Doyle’s plan will include altering or postponing those raises.
“It’s not clear right now what other plans he has, but he has recently frozen bonuses, and he’s looking at what else he can do to solve this shortfall,” Vigue said.
Vos said he hopes Doyle’s plan includes cutbacks on a much larger level, adding many of Wisconsin’s tens of thousands of employees will still receive a 2 percent increase in June.
The last raise state employees received was in July 2008, when their salaries increased by 1 percent.
Doyle’s salary is $137,092 and cannot be changed until his term ends in January 2011.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
