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Following the revelation that the average annual salary for City of Aurora employees is nearly $60,000, one Coloradan is calling on lawmakers to consider cutting salaries and benefits for city and state employees. 

James Frye of Citizens for Responsible Aurora Government (CRAG) is upset that the City of Aurora has 94 city employees making more than $100,000 per year, and that the average annual salary for the city’s 2,666 employees approaches $60,000. Yet when the city needed money to help keep four libraries open, they tried to raise property taxes instead of cutting the pay for their employees, Frye said. That proposal failed.

“My sense of government in general is that their first response is that we need to raise taxes or generate additional revenue from somewhere,” he said. 

For their part, the city has implemented two furlough days for its employees. The furlough days will save the city about $1 million.

But Frye doesn’t think the furlough days go far enough. Considering that the mean wage rate for all occupations in the Denver-Aurora area is around $47,150, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Aurora city employees are making on average $17,395 in benefits on top of their salaries, he believes the city should seriously consider cutting the pay of its employees.

“I would hope they would consider other alternatives, because if we’re in a prolonged economic recession, things may not be getting better for a while, and they may need to cut salaries to help out,” he said.

During the “worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” Republicans and Libertarians have been calling for across-the-board budget cuts.

A budget-balancing bill proposed by Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, included a .24-percent reduction in state payroll spending for the current fiscal year and a 4.39-percent reduction for the next fiscal year. The bill was killed by the Legislature last month. 

For their part, Colorado WINS, the bargaining group created in 2007 to represent state employees, said last month that the state would have ended up losing if Republicans “balance the state’s budget on the backs of state employees.” 

“State employees have not received raises in two years, been forced to take unpaid furlough days, face significant increases in health care costs and also introduced today is a 2.5-percent reduction in their take-home pay to offset the state’s share of their PERA payment,” said a statement issued last month by Colorado WINS Executive Director Robert Gibson. “Enough is enough.”

Colorado WINS issued a report in December saying that state services and personnel have already been stressed to the limit by Colorado’s budget crisis. 

“Colorado’s State Employee Workforce; Stressed to the Limit” claims that Colorado has the leanest workforce in the Rocky Mountain Region, drastically under invests in assets like education, highways, police protection and natural resources, and is disinvesting in its state workforce. Colorado state employees on average make $52,000 a year and have not gotten raises in two years, the report said.

“Our report verifies what state employees in the field have been saying for the better part of a year,” said a statement from Gibson in December. “We have been cut to the bone, and not only are Colorado WINS members suffering, but so are the citizens of Colorado.” 

But Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, offered a sharp rebuke following the report’s release, calling it politicized and unhelpful.

“We are in the midst of a recession and facing a massive state budget shortfall and the union is blind to it as they continue to push their Chicago-style politics,” he said in a statement. “As a former civil servant myself, I know that our state employees take pride in what they do for our state, and while union bosses are busy whining and issuing politicized reports, Colorado’s state employees are going above and beyond to serve their fellow Coloradans, and I thank them for that.”

Gov. Bill Ritter Spokesman Evan Dreyer pointed out last month that Ritter’s administration is reducing personnel costs by more than $100 million. Additionally, the executive branch workforce has shed 1,000 employees since the economy started to decline in 2008.

But a spokesman for Scott McInnis, the Republican running for Colorado governor, said that state would save a lot of money by going back to the number of state workers who were employed under Gov. Bill Owens.

“There is no question that across-the-board cuts need to be in order, but there also needs to be a focus on exactly what government employees are doing and what their functionalities are and whether or not those have become obsolete,” he said.

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