Its, Well, thats the way weve always done it. . Fazio said that it reflects the pull unions have on state government and that taxpayers will end up footing the bill. In 2015, Connecticut paid $1.7 billion to 49,111 retirees, according to the Comptroller's Open Pension website. CT Mirror is a nonprofit newsroom. The states robust, short-term fiscal position is a sugar high that will pass when the federal stimulus money goes away, ODea said. The comptrollers office cautions that some those eligible to retire will not yet have earned full retirement benefits, giving some an incentive to stay. House and Senate negotiators expressed optimism Monday as they began trading budget proposals, despite gaps in spending over issues such as public schools, land preservation and tourism marketing. When the CPI-W rises above 2 percent, those retirees will receive either 2 percent or a percentage of the rate of inflation, depending on how high the rate rises. The best long-run thing for the state pension system is to have inflation just at or above 2%. Government bureaucracies are notoriously resistant to change, layered with the accretion of rules, processes, union contracts, all contributing to a workplace culture. Hazard or pandemic pay wasnt part of the negotiations, but will be resolved as part of another agreement, Lamont said. Corporate Support: Advertising & Sponsorship, saves the state about $150 million over the next decade. Theres no way to take on the legacy of mass incarceration other than to undo it, one step at a time. Some Republicans have said the hefty bonuses are only an election-year stunt from Lamont, a Democrat, to shore up his standing with his labor base. Ned Lamont previously touted. 2022 Retirement Changes for CT State Employees The Democrat-controlled House voted 96-52 to approve the contracts, after a four-hour debate during which Republicans insisted the compensation far outstrips what private-sector workers are receiving, or what taxpayers can afford. More than 46,000 Connecticut state employees could soon get a significant raise -- and bonuses - thanks to a new union contract that won approval in a key legislative committee Monday. Private-sector employees can only dream of having that, said Sen. Henri Martin, R-Bristol. Marc has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Western Connecticut State University. Watch Live at 7:00 PM: The U.S. and the Holocaust, a film by Ken Burns | Screening & Panel Discussion . in its annual Fiscal Accountability Report. Critics say the deal is too generous and could lead to future tax hikes. Jessica Hill / Associated Press More than 40,000 unionized state employees would receive $3,500 each in special bonuses by mid-July under tentative contract agreements reached this week with. Why? The State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition represents 35 different bargaining units and more than 40,000 state employees. She noted that West Virginia recently granted state employees a 5% raise while Arizona bumped pay for its correction officers by 20% and for workers in many other departments by 10%. How will state and local budgets be affected by fewer federal resources? Thats a big risk, but its also an amazing opportunity to reinvent how we do things, to bring in technology to automate a lot of the manual processes that can be more efficiently done by software today.. The newest class of state police trainees will be selected from a pool of candidates who were recruited on social media and applied and initially screened online. The board has voted to approve the following cost of living increase for January 2023. Meanwhile, too much of the states work still is done on paper, and the information that is collected digitally cannot be easily shared among agencies, Geballe said. BCG documented that the sclerotic state bureaucracy takes an average of 33 weeks to hire a new employee. If you have employees affected by the . "But this is also a unique situation where state employees did extraordinary work during a paradigm-altering pandemic, inflation has concurrently increased, and the state workforce could potentially undergo significant changes due to retirements and uncompetitive wages.". By 2020, the state paid $2.2 billion to 55,348 retirees. How did state higher education system get into this financial mess The state also faces a potential wave of retirements. It could be because it is not supported, or that JavaScript is intentionally disabled. Republicans argue the SEBAC package will lead to big deficits in a few years -- and tax hikes. . State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition. Retired state employees receive a cost-of-living adjustment every year in either January or July depending on the employees retirement date based on the CPI-W for the previous 12 months. building a betterand more civilConnecticut to live, work, and play. Connecticut State Department of Administrative Services CT.gov Home Department of Administrative Services Human Resources Business Rules and Regulations Compensation Salary Increase Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) Salary Increase Non-Represented Employees Expense Reimbursement/Meal Allowance Pay Differential Longevity Recruitment Pay Because the state is facing a massive retirement wave, which, if mishandled, could cripple state government. Connecticuts pension COLAs, however, are set for a change one year from now prompting concerns over a potential surge in state employee retirements. Your donation today will allow us to continue this work on your behalf. He has been the state finances reporter at CT Mirror since it launched in 2010. It will slow cost-of-living adjustments for all new retirees and raise health costs for a few, primarily high earners. Consistently, studies show that the compensation of Connecticut state employees exceeds average private sector compensation by one of the highest margins of the 50 states. Memo - 2022 Retirement Changes for CT State Employees They would then get the same increase on July 1, 2022 and again on July 1, 2023. They are our people, who we count on each day to make us safe, she said. Ideal timing for the announcement would be between Christmas and the New Year. The deal is now final since the state Senate and House approved it. Thermo Fisher Scientific bought the company the same year. The changes will only affect those who retire after July of 2022, but according to the OLR report, historically such changes have resulted in a larger number of employees retiring before the cut-off date. While we wait to see the thousands of individual and committee bills that while dominate the myriad policy debates this year, Yankee Institute is hard at work promoting free-market solutions to the problems we face from Stamford to Putnam and Mystic to Salisbury. Geballe is no stranger to bureaucracies and the opportunities, challenges and necessities of wrenching change: He spent 11 years at IBM, which employs 350,000 people worldwide and preaches that the world is in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution, a convergence of new technologies powered by cloud computing. In addition, full-time workers would receive a $2,500 bonus in mid-May and an additional $1,000 bonus in mid-July. The bonuses, the GOP argued, are hardly the key to retaining workers, as the governor and other Democrats claim. So why might Lamont do something so patently unfair and so politically toxic as awarding pay raises to already overcompensated state workers while most Connecticut citizens and voters have been and still are hurting very badly? 2023 The Conneticut News Project. And Lamont reported this week that the current fiscal years budget is projected to close on June 30 with an unprecedented $3.95 billion surplus, equal to nearly 20% of entire General Fund. Gov. Its a matter of whether we can afford it.. We have three years to plan for that, Geballe said. 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Employees would also get a $2,500 bonus if they are employed as of March 31, 2022, and a $1,000 if they are employed July 1, 2022. Hartford lawyer Daniel Livingston, chief negotiator for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, or SEBAC, estimated that going with one-time bonuses and a smaller 2.5% annual cost-of-living raise saves the state about $150 million over the next decade. Were working really hard to digitize everything we do.. October 25, 2021 @ Connecticut is facing pressure from the private sector, municipalities and other states for its workers, Osten said, adding that the pandemic has made many state jobs less attractive. The 2022 State Holiday and Check Dates calendar for State Employees. Thats when more stringent limits on state retirement benefits, negotiated as part of a 2017 concessions deal with unions, take effect. Amazon and others in the private sector have made it very easy to envision what that future could look like, if you think about online shopping or online bank services, Geballe said. Were not attracting innovation and industry. Osten said the raises reflect the valuable work state employees provide daily, and particularly throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

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