As a top legislative priority, the F.O.P. strongly supported substantial salary improvements for all State employees.

The F.O.P. asked the legislature to make significant improvements to all State worker pay and benefits in accordance with the Joint Legislative Study Committee on State Employee Compensation.

Initially, the FOP took a strong stand in opposition to the original proposal, which would have made all new hires "at will" employees in exchange for a pay raise. After significant meetings with the Speaker of the House, and other legislative leadership, the FOP was allowed to draft an amendment, which removed the original "at will" provision for law enforcement and corrections employees. The F.O.P. amendment was adopted. Later, the "at will" provision for all other newly hired employees was further amended to start at grade 24 and above. Additionally, the pay raise portion was enhanced to 6.3%. (from the original 6%). As a top F.O.P. legislative priority, we supported SB1202 and HB 2661 as amended.

The bill was approved by the Senate and House and was transmitted to the Governor. The bill was signed into law on 1/30/2006 and the Governor used a line item veto to remove the remaining "at will" portion of the bill. The bill included an early enactment date and has been implemented.

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The top priority for the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police is salary and benefit improvements for State Corrections Officers.

The F.O.P. strongly supports substantial catch-up salary improvements for State Corrections Officers. As the top legislative priority for the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, we are asking the legislature to make salary and benefit improvements by including the ADC Corrections Officers Pay Plan in the budget. The F.O.P. legislative committee has been meeting with legislators for several months on this issue. A pay plan must be negotiated during budget discussions between the legislature and the Governor. Generally, the legislature has been very receptive to our calls to make substantial and effective salary improvements and the Governor fully supports the proposed Corrections Officer Pay Plan.

The Republican leadership in the Legislature and the Governor are currently in negotiation over the ADC Corrections Officer Pay Plan Proposal, which asks for $39 million in salary improvements for ADC employees. The negotiations are continuing and details will be disclosed soon.

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Republic Editorial Mar. 6, 2006

Low salaries are creating high costs for Arizona's prison system.

It all adds up to alarming problems that include:

• High turnover. More than one of four corrections officers leave the job every year, usually lured by better-paid jobs in county and federal facilities.
• High vacancy rates. More than 20 percent of positions are open, double the vacancy rate in 2004.
• High overtime bills. The Department of Corrections expects to spend $37 million in overtime this year, triple the OT spending in 2005.

Arizona is being penny-wise and pound-foolish by scrimping on the budget for corrections officers.

We can't have secure, well-managed prisons without an adequate number of experienced guards.

And that takes adequate pay.

The recent across-the-board increase of 6.3 percent for state workers is a start. But the Legislature needs to give corrections salaries another boost to make them more competitive.

It's a simple issue of market forces.

Starting pay for state corrections officers, after graduation from academy, will be $29,014 a year after the raise takes effect in mid-March.

Maricopa County pays $31,179, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio is lobbying for an increase. Pima County is going to $33,696 in April. And the Federal Bureau of Prisons tops them all at $38,703.

And they also offer less stress, because the staff isn't stretched to the breaking point.

The average overtime by state corrections officers has been running a staggering 16.4 hours a week. That becomes an exhausting burden as it stretches on week after week.

The extra work hours take a toll on family life. More than 40 percent of the state's corrections officers have children at home, and 17 percent are single parents.

The problem feeds on itself: The heavy load of OT hurts morale and contributes to the number of guards leaving the department. That creates the vacancies that drive the need for overtime.

It gets worse. The Department of Corrections took a big hit last year when state government had an across-the-board elimination of vacant positions.

Corrections lost 565 positions for corrections officers, not because the jobs were unneeded, but because they couldn't be filled fast enough.

"We are really in a nosedive," Corrections Director Dora Schriro warns. "I don't think we can go on like this much longer."

The Legislature should restore the jobs that were cut and raise wages to a competitive level by approving a proposed $39 million pay package. The cost of the package would essentially be offset by projected savings in overtime.

The department proposes setting starting pay, after training, at $35,475.

State prisons are in relatively remote locations, and the job is dangerous, as we saw in the hostage standoff in 2004 at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis.

Every time the state has to recruit and train a guard, it costs more than $9,000.

The officers that quit have an average of 3.8 years of experience, so they leave the job just as they're hitting their stride.

"The one thing Arizona doesn't want is an inmate population with more experience than its workforce," Schriro says. "That's a terrifying thought, isn't it?"

Our state prisons have become a farm team for counties and the feds.

That's shortsighted, inefficient and risky. Especially when the solution is so straightforward: Give state corrections officer a competitive pay scale.

General Guidelines:

1. State your purpose for writing the first sentence of the letter.

2. Correctly identify the issue in the subject line. "ADC Pay Plan Budget Request".

3. Be polite.

4. Feel free to include personal information about why you support a salary increase.

5. Close your letter restating your reason for writing.

6. Address only one issue per letter. If you want to raise another issue with that elected official, write a second letter.

Sample Letter:

You are encouraged to use this template when writing a letter or sending an e-mail message to elected officials about the ADC FY 2007 pay package.

Dear Senator ,  or Dear Representative,

As a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, I am writing to urge you to support the executive budget request for the market rate salaries for correctional series staff in the Arizona Department of Corrections. With fewer than 1,000 officer on shift at any time we manage the State’s prisoner population of 33,330 inmates, the majority serving time for violent crimes, with excellence. While our contributions to public safety are considerable, our salaries are not competitive with sheriff’s departments and the federal bureau of prisons, our starting pay lagging as much as $6,400 behind others in our field in Arizona. Due to the high turnover and vacancy rates most of us work overtime every week. We do difficult work under circumstances that are all too often dangerous and made more challenging by the growing number of vacancies and greater number of less experienced officers.

We need your help to ensure we perform our duties with the excellence you have come to expect from ADC. Support public safety. Please support, the executive budget request for a pay plan for State correctional officers.

Sincerely,

Your name and rank

Your complex and unit

Any other contact info you would like to provide (phone, address, etc.)

Tribune Editorial January 21, 2006
Correctional officers are leaving Arizona’s prison system for better-paying jobs at such an alarming rate that state lawmakers must act immediately on a $39 million plan from Gov. Janet Napolitano.
 
This is the only way to protect the safety of those still working in the prisons and the public at large.

Legislators and state officials have been aware for years that prison gates have become rapidly spinning turnstiles for guards who receive training at state expense, and then leave for similar posts in county jails and federal facilities where the average salaries are up to $6,300 higher.

As a result, the state’s prisons are being protected by shrinking staffs filled with a larger number of inexperienced guards, a key reason why in 2004 two violent inmates at the Lewis prison complex were able to take control of a guard tower and hold two officers hostage for 15 days and raping one of them.

Mandatory overtime to fill missing positions has become so common that the average corrections officer works 55 hours a week, every week. Until last year, those officers often didn’t get paid for that overtime unless they left state employment, but instead were forced to “bank” the hours as future days off that they never were allowed to take.

A lawsuit last year forced the state to start paying cash for overtime, which the Legislature did fund. But the extra hours are piling up on the backs of officers who go to work every day to confront some of the nastiest people on the planet. Police officers and firefighters confront dangerous moments in their jobs, but even they don’t endure the daily grinding tension of managing crowds of convicted felons.

Lawmakers made a small effort last year by also approving an pay raise of $1,000 for corrections officers above what other state employees received. But a comprehensive approach to improving pay and benefits has been largely ignored as Napolitano and key Republican lawmakers have clashed over whether more of Arizona’s inmates should be placed in private prisons instead.

The small pay raise has failed miserably, as the total of number of state correction officers dropped from 5,456 in January 2005 to 4,914 by the end of the year, or almost 600 people fewer than authorized by the Legislature.

State prisons director Dora Schriro says she has made a number of administrative changes to slow the loss of employees. She has demanded prison supervisors improve their scheduling to reduce the amount of required overtime. She has adjusted the requirements for the number of people on different shifts on each site, and her agency has assigned a variety of mundane tasks to lower-paid civilians to focus correction officers on prison security.

But another 600 new jobs are about to become available in new federal and county lockups. And Schriro says she has nothing to convince state officers to pass up those higher-paying positions.

“We are quickly reaching a critical point where a crisis in management must be prevented from becoming a catastrophe,” Schriro said.

Additional private prisons could be the long-term answer to the state’s growing inmate population. A state-funded analysis of the costs and benefits should be released soon.

For now, lawmakers must accept the free market compels them to offer competitive pay raises to attract new corrections officers and to keep experienced guards. Otherwise, an inmate escape or another prison-hostage standoff could be just around the corner.