By Dan Boyd
Albuquerque Journal
SANTA FE, N.M. — The minimum pay for corrections officers at New Mexico state-run prisons will jump by nearly $8,000 a year — from $26,229 to $34,195 annually — starting in July in an attempt to shore up chronic understaffing and reduce high overtime rates.
However, labor union officials said it’s unfair that only 557 of the state’s 1,046 corrections officers, those currently pulling in less than the new minimum salary, will actually get a pay raise under the plan presented Wednesday to a key legislative panel.
Miles Conway, a state spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, said the salary plan will “cause divisiveness and another crisis in morale as New Mexico’s most senior experienced officers are passed over for a pay adjustment that reflects their experience.”
However, top-ranking Corrections Department officials say the agency intends to ask the Legislature, likely during the 2017 session, to also provide salary increases for veteran corrections officers who will not get raises this time around.
“This is a first step,” Deputy Secretary Alex Tomlin told members of the Legislative Finance Committee during Wednesday’s hearing at the state Capitol.
Low pay for corrections officers has generated increasing concern in recent years in New Mexico, which had one of the deadliest prison riots in the nation’s history in 1980 at the old penitentiary outside Santa Fe.
In some cases, officers have said they face 16-hour workdays and up to 72-hour workweeks. As a result, the Corrections Department is on track to spend $17 million on overtime in the current budget year, Tomlin said.
In large part, the overtime is due to high vacancy rates — as high as 50 percent at some state-run prisons — caused by trouble recruiting and retaining employees with starting pay of just $13.65 an hour in most cases.
In an attempt to fix the problem, lawmakers approved an additional $4.5 million for Corrections Department pay increases in a $6.2 billion budget bill for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Most other rank-and-file state workers will not receive raises in the coming year.
State Personnel Director Justin Najaka told lawmakers Wednesday that the change in salary structure — which also includes an increase in the maximum pay for corrections officers — should make the Corrections Department more competitive with other law enforcement agencies and jail facilities, like the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque.
He also predicted it will lead to a decrease in overtime pay and vacancy rates, but cautioned that improvements might not happen overnight.
“It may take a year, or it may take two years, to demonstrate how successful this has been,” Najaka told LFC members.
In addition to the 557 corrections officers, an additional 170 Corrections Department staffers — including prison wardens and other higher-ranking employees — will also get pay increases starting in July.
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