Good Morning,

 

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee completed its version of the budget. While we had a few scary moments, we came out OK by the end of the week. We were able to preserve an incentive pay plan for security staff at Level II and III prisons. It is not exactly what we wanted, but we hope it will help address our vacancy rates.

 

Like the house budget, the senate proposal provides a 3% cost of living increase to all state employees with no State Health Plan rate increases for state employees.

 

When the entire budget process is complete, I will provide a summary of our new items.

 

Sam Walton’s Rule Number 9: Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find a competitive advantage. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover, if you run an efficient operation.

 

This has real application for our agency. First, controlling our expenses already allows us to succeed at funding levels where virtually no other correctional system has successfully operated. Second, the willingness to find more efficiency allows us to spend scarce resources on needs that the legislature refuses to fund. Third, controlling our expenses has made us the most efficient agency in state government.

 

Our current efforts to control our workers compensation costs will require that we revise our policies and practice. Ultimately, we must change a culture that too frequently pushes people toward the workers compensation system with few checks and balances and no investigation. We must develop and enforce a light duty policy that is reasonable, but still recognizes that all of our employees must be able to perform certain functions. Since we currently spend over $10 million per year on workers compensation premiums, the potential savings for this agency are large.