Legislature lets Minnesota Zoo break state salary cap to pay director

The Minnesota Zoo continued its winning ways at the Capitol yesterday with House and Senate approvals of a bill to remove the salary cap for the zoo’s director. If Gov. Tim Pawlenty approves, the zoo could pay its top dog more than the current legal limit of 130 percent of the governor’s $120,000 salary, or $156,000. The amount exceeding 95 percent of the governor’s salary must come from nonpublic sources.

In his Star Tribune column today (and earlier in comments at the Minnesota Monitor), Nick Coleman decried the disparity in the governor vetoing projects at Como Zoo while sparing funding for the Minnesota Zoo. (Como Zoo’s director earns $95,113.63, the city of St. Paul’s payroll department told me today.)

With exceptions for certain employees like zoo directors and football coaches, state law holds government workers to a lower limit: no more than 110 percent of the governor’s pay. That’s eased somewhat since the Legislature made changes in 2005: now, with annual cost-of-living adjustments to the cap, state employees can earn up to $144,711, even without seeking a special waiver. From 1997 to 2005, local governments applied for 56 salary cap waivers, according to the state Department of Employee Relations. Since 2005, the department has received fewer requests for waivers; in fact, according to information provided to the Minnesota Monitor, it has received exactly zero — raising the question of whether Minnesota’s once-tight-fitting salary cap is doing anything at all anything at all anymore. (No one seems to worry now about whether the cap makes their salary look fat.)

That doesn’t mean local governments haven’t complained. Last year Blaine’s mayor contended that the salary cap cramped the city’s style when it came to hiring a new city manager. “We’re never going to catch up with cities like St. Louis — and that’s who we bid against for a manager,” he told the Star Tribune.

Blaine’s gripes elicited a Star Tribune editorial for a full-scale repeal of the salary cap, said to be the only one of its kind in the country.

This session the Legislature has considered several changes to the salary cap and compensation regulations including establishing independent councils that would decide on politically difficult pay hikes for legislators, constitutional officers and commissioners of state agencies.

Meanwhile, Blaine was able to hire a city manager without new legislation or even a waiver request: a 56-year-old assistant city manager from Bloomington took the job.