Salary cap too tight?

This morning, for the second time in nine months, a Star Tribune editorial rails against the state’s salary cap for government officials, claiming—again, based on anecdotal evidence—that the cap hurts Minnesota in the hunt for qualified public servants.

Today’s poster children are a Ramsey County manager and the No. 2 person at the state pension fund, both of whom are leaving for better-paying jobs out of state (California and Maryland, respectively). Last November, the Strib’s poster child was a job opening for city manager of Blaine, Minn. — a "help wanted" situation that the Strib’s editorial board felt was urgent.

Yet within two months, the Blaine job was filled—by an assistant city manager from Bloomington whose 20 years of experience drew notice in the Strib’s news columns, no salary cap exception necessary. He was last seen in the Strib a week ago cheering the traffic and revenue Blaine will bring in from hosting two big sports events simultaneously.

In fact, no local unit of government has applied for a waiver to the salary cap since 2005, when the legislature eased limits to allow public officials to earn as much as 110 percent of the governor’s salary. That’s what the Minnesota Department of Finance and Employee Relations told the Minnesota Independent in April and a spokesperson confirmed today that the department has received no such requests in the last three months.

Apparently cities and counties are functioning fine with the salary cap that’s in place. For example, the Minneapolis park superintendent, hired before 2005 without even applying for the job, now makes more than the governor: $139,817 per year, according to the parks’ payroll department, or sightly less than the $144,000 allowed under the cap (now more than 110 percent of the governor’s $120,000 salary due to cost-of-living increases).

Besides the administrative process of applying for an exemption, the state Legislature periodically exempts particular positions, such as the Minnesota Zoo director, from the salary cap. But even the longstanding exemption for the president of the University of Minnesota isn’t enough to stop public employees from leaving for California: That’s where former U of M President Mark Yudof now works, earning $828,000 per year instead of the $350,000 he made here. (As we reported here back in March, that increase amounted to an extra 88,000 plates of the pancakes Yudof made such a show of loving when he was here.)