The Item
HUNTSVILLE — Salary was a hot-button issue this year for the thousands of rank-and-file Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees. Correctional officers felt left out in the cold when several top leaders got hefty pay raises, while they not only received raises significantly less but an employment shortage made the work tougher.
Months after Texas prison guards learned their top boss got a nearly 40 percent pay raise while they got just 5 percent, new figures show other top prison officials have received hefty raises, as well.
Executive pay increases ranging from 8 percent to more than 23 percent were given in September to top leaders in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, according to salary information obtained by the American-Statesman under the Texas Public Information Act in November.
Prison employees complain those pay hikes are too generous. And the prison system is not alone in hiking executive salaries.
While lists of current raises for all agencies were not immediately available, criticism of executive pay hikes in state government has increased in the past three years. State leaders have insisted the hikes are necessary to retain top talent, but rank-and-file workers are increasingly critical that they are being left behind.
“We used to have a system where executive salaries are set based on a civil service system that compares them with comparable salaries in government,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of the watchdog group Public Citizen of Texas. “That way, we’re not getting hornswoggled into big executive raises based on the private sector that may not be comparable.”
Full story: TDCJ pay raises spark ire