Stress your stress level when applying for state job

By By Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
The state Board of Education will provide its new two-year college chancellor, Dr. Freida Hill, a compensation package that will approach $350,000 annually.
Hill will receive a salary of $289,900, a $28,800 annual housing allowance, a state car, health insurance and retirement, travel expenses, temporary housing for one month, up to $5,000 in moving expenses and she will be eligible for up to a $15,000-a-year performance bonus to be negotiated with the board.
Hill leaves the post of deputy commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia. She will become the first female chancellor in Alabama and also the highest paid. David Byers Jr. of Birmingham, who chaired the board committee recommending the benefits, said Hill “is very excited about coming.”
Most folks, I suggest, would likely be excited about receiving nearly a 60 percent increase in compensation… the approximate increase from Dr. Hill’s pay in Georgia and what she will earn in Alabama.
Hill’s compensation package is significantly higher than former chancellor Bradley Byrne. Byrne’s pay was $248,500, plus $20,000 in deferred compensation.
Byers stressed to reporters that pay for similar positions throughout the southeast ranged from about $160,000 in Mississippi to just above $600,000 in Kentucky. The national median, he said, was in the $260,000 range.
Byers told The Huntsville Times that the board concluded that Hill deserved a higher salary because she would have the “additional level of stress of working for an elected board.” That might be justification for a first grade teacher, but it’s the first time I’ve heard it as an attempted justification for a highly-paid state official.
But in it’s zeal to please its well-compensated staff, the board has also voted to provide the board’s chief legal counsel, Joan Davis, $225,000 for the six months she served as interim chancellor. If my math is correct, that amount annualized would total $450,000.
We can only hope we have the best money can buy.
GOP’s Johnson challenges Riley to polygraph test
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson has challenged Gov. Bob Riley and former Riley campaign aide Dan Gans to a lie detector test, saying he stands behind his statements about millions of dollars from Mississippi Indian casinos being funneled into Riley’s 2002 campaign for governor, something I reported here last week.
However, the main question which has surfaced in Montgomery is the reason behind Johnson’s attacks on Riley.
After all, he worked for the governor when he was in Congress, was one of the key figures in both his campaigns for governor and served in his cabinet for eight years.
Johnson’s wife, who heads the state’s Broadband Initiative, remains on the state payroll working for the current administration.
Some in the capital city believe it is personal and that Riley must have done something very personal dealing with Johnson or his family to elicit that kind of criticism, nonetheless it remains a real mystery here in the Cradle of Conspiracy.
Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com