NASHVILLE – While thousands of Tennessee teachers, state workers and higher education personnel are seeing their proposed pay raises disappear from Gov. Bill Lee’s budget as tax collections plummet, hundreds of officials and employees, including the governor, are still slated to see salary hikes.
The disconnect is attributable to years-old, stand-alone statutory provisions that dictate pay increases in at least 16 categories, officials say.
Besides Lee, a Republican who would see a $4,600 increase to his current $198,780 annual salary , the lengthy 16-category list includes Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, an appointed Republican who is getting a $4,500 boost to the $193,488 he now makes, according to the analysis done by Senate Democrats.
Hundreds of elected state judges would collectively see $794,900 in increases. State prosecutors and criminal investigators would get $656,600, half of what the budget originally provided before tax collections began imploding as a result of the coronavirus and its impact on state tax collections as economic activity fell as businesses closed and many Tennesseans stayed home.
Add all the remaining pay increases up – and state Senate Democratic staffers did just that – and it comes to an additional cost to taxpayers of $7.36 million per year.