Don't Look for Changes in State Worker Pay or Benefits

As Kim Bradford writes on The News Tribune's editorial page blog, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown is fed up with criticisms of the compensation package for state workers. On her blog, Brown writes

[State employees]  deserve our thanks, not our ire.

Bradford concludes,

Sounds a lot like state worker pay won't be part of any budget solution coming out of Olympia next year, at least not if Brown has her way.

Brown's post was prompted by editorial criticism of the pay and benefits packages enjoyed by state workers, which has apparently been placed off limits by the governor and legislative leaders. The News Tribune had a particularly sharp and well-founded editorial. But as we've noted previously, they were hardly alone in challenging lawmakers to call for changes in the compensation package. In this column, I also suggested that the solution to the budget shortfall had to include changes in employee compensaiton.