Monday was “Lobby Day” at the state Capitol for North Dakota United.
The organization represents state employees and teachers. They talked about the pay plan for state workers, as well as education issues such as "education savings accounts."
PAY PLAN
Dana Henry is an accountant with the state Information Technology Department. She is concerned about the pay plan for state workers, that Governor Armstrong advanced. And that’s a “3 and 3 plan” – three percent raises for each year of the coming biennium.
"Three and three does not match the pace of inflation," Henry said in an interview. "It does not match the pace of our cost-of-living adjustments. And again, we're being asked to do more with less. We have got to do better for our North Dakota employees."
Henry said in highly-technical positions, people can make a lot more money in the private sector. And she said the Legislature’s decision to end the state’s “defined benefit” retirement plan, and replacing it with a “defined contribution” plan hasn’t helped, either.
"One of the main drivers to bring people in is to have something guaranteed for them after 20, 30 years of service," Henry said. "Now that we have made these plans portable, there's going to be this rotating door, with people coming in and out. The institutional knowledge id going to be lost, and we're not going to be able to serve the citizens of North Dakota the way we should."
EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
The group also lobbied against "education savings accounts," saying they will take away needed money for local schools.
"It would be a significantly better investment to just invest those money into local public schools, because it's our kids that need it," said Alexis Russet from Mandan. "We need it for our curriculums. We need to pay our teachers, so we keep the highly-qualified teachers in the classroom, instead of leaving the classroom."
Jessica VanWinkle of Bismarck said the money from the ESAs will likely go toward private schools.
"They're just probably going to raise tuition, or get that money, and the moment that student or that family is causing issues that might not conform with their values, they'll just kick them out," VanWinkle said. "And then public schools are back to teaching without those resources or funding. It's pretty imperative that we keep those public dollars with public schools."
Monday was a state holiday, but the Legislature was in-session.
