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State employees payroll levels flat in 2014 but overtime was up

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State employees payroll levels flat in 2014 but overtime was up

COLUMBUS — Declines in state employee payroll leveled off last year, but the amount of overtime was on the rise.

Data released Friday by the Ohio Department of Administrative Services show that Dr. Zinovi Goubar, a psychiatrist with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, received the highest gross pay of any state employee in 2014 at $394,705, of which $218,433 was overtime.

In comparison, Gov. John Kasich received $148,304 and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor was paid $150,850.

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Mr. Kasich and Justice O’Connor’s salaries are set by statute, and recent legislative attempts to raise salaries for them and other state and locally elected officials have gone nowhere.

Dr. Goubar’s overtime was primarily “on-duty” pay that psychiatrists, physicians, and other professionals received under terms of the state’s contract with the Service Employees International Union. The highest paid employees tended to be medical professionals, many of them working with the mental health department and the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Gross pay includes salary as well as sick, vacation, overtime, and personal pay.

Total state employee payroll was $2.96 billion, up a statistically insignificant amount from 2013.

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That ends the downward trend that saw state pay drop from $3.13 billion in 2011 to $2.99 billion in 2012 and $2.96 billion in 2013.

Overtime pay climbed last year to $113.5 million from $111.2 million in 2013.

Last week, while touting the fact that Ohio had recovered all private-sector jobs lost during the recession, Mr. Kasich noted the number of state employees had been falling.

“There’s been some drifting going on in the state, but a large majority of this is just not replacing people when they retire,” he said.

While payroll was up, the state-worker headcount has continued to drop, from 58,766 in 2010, the last year under Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, to 51,792 in 2014. Employment peaked during the Voinovich administration in 1994, when Ohio employed 68,573 people.

The only member of Mr. Kasich’s team listed as administrative staff who is paid more than the governor is his chief of staff, Beth Hansen, at $177,866, although some aides are listed in other departments’ budgets.

The database does not include employees of public universities and colleges where, in some cases, presidents’ contracts can be significantly larger.

Sixty-six employees earned $190,000 or more in 2014, while 82 earned between $150,000 and $190,000, all above the governor’s salary.

In addition to the release of this data, the Buckeye Institute and Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel have also provided such information on their websites.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

First Published March 14, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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