A very public thank you

Thank you to the state of North Carolina for providing me with an opportunity to pursue the vocation that I love, for providing my oldest son the opportunity to pursue a high-quality college education, and for funding the school teachers that taught and inspired both of my sons.

Thank you to Guilford County for providing school buildings, school books, teachers, and staff that also helped my children to develop.

Thank you to Greensboro for keeping my house safe and my neighborhood clean.

Thank you to the state of Virginia for providing me with a college education and with mentors who helped set my on the path toward my career. Thank you to the states of Virginia and New Jersey for most of my elementary and secondary education.

Thank you to the United States for employing my father for many, many years and giving my family not only prosperity but also an opportunity to travel throughout the Far East and Pacific. Thank you also for funding the terrific overseas Department of Defense schools that my sisters, brother and I attended. Thank you for your faith and support of many of my research projects. Thank you for making my parents' retirement easier, especially during a time when the economy and their savings were crashing. Finally, thank you for the military cemetery where my parents now rest.

These blessings did not just magically appear but came out of the toil and occasional good fortune of some neighbors I know and many more neighbors I don't. Thank you all.

Republicans agree that some state workers are underpaid--their own staff!

Most state workers in North Carolina have gone three years without a raise, have been hit with higher contributions, deductibles and co-payments on their health insurance, and have even had a short furlough. However, the News & Observer reports that some state workers have done much, much better.

House Speaker Thom Tillis in the last few months handed out raises as high as 27 percent to half his staff after vowing in January to set an example for others in state government by cutting his office payroll.

Tillis' general counsel Jason Kay got a 27 percent raise, from $110,000 a year to $140,000.

Chief of staff Charles Thomas got a 25 percent, $30,000-a-year increase, from $120,000 to $150,000.

Policy advisers Christopher Hayes and Amy Hobbs received $12,000 raises, both going from salaries of $70,000 to $82,000 a year. Kay, Hayes and Hobbs are all new hires who joined the state payroll for the first time in January. Thomas is a former state House member from Asheville.

In all, Tillis gave raises to seven members of the 14-person staff he had before April. He hired an additional employee in May, paying him $70,000 annually.

Far from cutting his own office payroll, the News & Observer found that Rep. Tillis' was at least 10 percent higher than his Democratic predecessor.

So much for shared sacrifice.

Sliming federal workers

Senators Claire McClaskill and Tom Coburn have decided to call out federal workers about their delinquent taxes.

While millions of Americans continue to send back portions of their hard earned wages to Washington, many federal employees are failing to contribute their share.

...In 2009, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) found nearly 100,000 civilian federal employees were delinquent on their federal income taxes, owing over $1 billion in unpaid federal income taxes.

Gosh.

In response to this overwhelming problem, the senators have introduced legislation that would fire any federal employee who doesn't pay his or her taxes.

How bad exactly is this problem? There were 2.8 million federal employees at the end of 2009. If 100,000 were behind or short on their taxes, that would imply a delinquency rate of 3.5 percent (the figure is actually lower because the Senators have rounded their number of federal tax delinquents up).

How does this compare to the rest of the population? At the end of 2009, there were 236.9 million noninstitutionalized civilians aged 16 or older. Let's use this as the tax-owing population (this adds lots of teenagers and people with very low incomes who don't pay taxes but also omits the military and some institutionalized people who might owe taxes). The IRS reports that there were 13.2 million delinquent tax returns in 2009. Subtracting out the federal workers and their delinquent taxes, this translates to a non-federal delinquency rate of 5.6 percent.

So, federal employees were 37 percent less likely to be delinquent on their taxes than other Americans. For this, they have the privilege of being slimed by Senators McClaskill and Coburn.

Wisconsin public workers already under-compensated

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute concludes that Wisconsin public employees are under-compensated.

Comparisons controlling for education, experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability reveal that employees of both state and local governments in Wisconsin earn less than comparable private sector employees. On an annual basis, full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. This compensation disadvantage is smaller but still significant when hours worked are factored in.

Conservatives love to point out that the average compensation for public workers typically exceeds that of private workers. This is no different in Wisconsin where the report indicates that full-time public workers cost their employers just over $63,000 per year on average compared to just under $62,000 for full-time private workers.

However, public workers tend to have significantly more education (the proportion of public workers with college degrees is double the proportion of private sector workers with degrees). Within education groups, the report finds that public sector employees in Wisconsin receive less compensation than private employees, except for those with less than a high school education.

The report also uses regression methods to adjust for other measurable differences between employees, including education, experience, gender, race, citizenship, and employer size. Once those controls are included, average annual compensation for public workers is 8.2 percent less than for comparable private workers. Average hourly compensation is 4.8 percent less.

Like many other states, Wisconsin faces serious and real budget problems. Difficult and painful choices are required. One problem, however, that Wisconsin does not face is over-compensated public employees. Describing them as such is misleading, and treating them as such will ultimately be self-defeating.