Legislative staffers to get raise as state worker layoffs loom
Hundreds of legislative staffers are slated to receive a 6 percent pay hike — at a cost of $1.3 million — in a move that comes as a still-unknown number of state employees are seeking buyouts and as potential layoffs loom ahead.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s office announced the pay raises on Thanksgiving eve, awarding 468 House employees what his office described as “cost of living” increases. They follow nearly two years to the day the last time his office unveiled pay bumps, and, DeLeo’s office said, will be covered by existing resources in the House’s $40.2 million budget.
But they come amid a backdrop of financial uncertainty for Gov. Charlie Baker and state government. Baker’s budget office has said the state is facing a $294 million budget deficit, and earlier this month, it wrapped a monthlong program in which it offered buyouts — with incentives of $5,000 or $15,000 — to tens of thousands executive branch employees.
The Baker administration has yet to say how many applied 10 days after the program closed. Dominick Ianno, a spokesman for budget chief Kristen Lepore, said yesterday that state agencies were still “reviewing and processing applications.”
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