State Bureaucracy Shrinks by 4,000 Bureaucrats; State Dems Complain

From the Indy Star:

The number of Hoosiers working full time for the state since Gov. Mitch Daniels took office in 2005 has fallen by more than 4,000, partly because some jobs have been turned over to private companies.

Most state employees have seen their salaries go up, but dollars spent on the executive and judicial branches have dropped by more than $15 million.

These are among several findings in a new state-pay database The Indianapolis Star is making available on its Web site today. The searchable database includes the names, positions and salaries of 35,218 full- and part-time employees who are on the state government payroll, plus 39,887 university and 403 legislative employees in Indiana.

Together, the state, legislative and university employees are paid more than $3.1 billion.

The highest salary: $500,000 for Indiana University men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

Most people paid by the state make far less, with the median salary for all employees $34,694.

The database shows that shifting jobs to the private sector is reducing the amount taxpayers spend on state salaries, although those savings are offset by the contracts the state has signed with private firms to take over the work.

The Family and Social Services Administration, for instance, is paying $1.16 billion over 10 years to a company to process welfare applications. The state previously had more than 2,000 employees handling that job; now, 1,399 are working for the private company, Dallas-based ACS.

In January 2005, the state government payroll listed 35,276 active, full-time employees in the executive and judicial branches combined making more than $1.27 billion.

As of Sept. 1, the state's payroll listed 31,259 active, full-time employees paid a total of nearly $1.26 billion. That's 4,017 fewer employees, and $15,349,441 less in the payroll.

Those still in state government are getting paid a little better, said state Personnel Director Debra Minott.

Under a new pay-for-performance system, about 8 percent of top-performing state government workers saw their pay jump by 10 percent. Most employees received a 4 percent raise this year, while about 7 percent whose work was deemed inadequate received no pay increase.

Democrats, of course, can never be pleased when there are fewer bureaucrats around, and (true to form) the Democratic Party's mouthpiece blog cried about it.

They like forcing bureaucrats and state employees to become members of the civil service union, because the union, in turn, contributes those taxes, err, mandatory payroll deductions, uh, dues.. yeah... dues to bankroll Democratic candidates.