We were as surprised as anyone to see the terms of personnel contracts offered to some senior managers by the outgoing administration of Gov. Bill Owens. The managers were promised a job under the new governor – and at the highest eligible salary.
This year, those contracts total $2.8 million.
It doesn’t just seem inappropriate, it seems impossible. If guaranteeing permanent jobs for key appointees doesn’t violate state personnel rules, we wonder what would.
In a letter to department heads this week, Gov. Bill Ritter’s office said the contracts violate state personnel rules and won’t be honored.
Some background: Colorado governors and their agency directors are allowed to appoint as many as 125 “senior executive service” employees, who then sign one-year contracts that expire each June 30.
The program gives each department some flexibility in selecting senior managers and allows these top officials higher salaries. In exchange, they give up some of the rights of traditional civil service employees.
Jeff Wells, Owens’ personnel chief, said the change was crafted to assure senior managers that they wouldn’t lose employment as a result of Owens leaving office. He said some contract employees approached him last year to come up “with something like this.”
We think he erred in doing so. Under the rules, when their contracts are up, they’re up. Gov. Roy Romer’s administration didn’t saddle Owens with such permanent employees.
Owens said Wednesday he was unaware of the contract changes, which were made last spring. “The insinuation that I offered them special treatment is simply false,” he said of the employees, many of whom he described as “holdovers” from the Romer years rather than Owens era loyalists.
Wells told Owens on Wednesday that he wanted to give the employees “an extra period of time to prove themselves” under a new governor, and to keep them from jumping ship in the waning days of the Owens administration. But since their contracts run until June 30, and Owens left Jan. 9, Wells’ explanation doesn’t make sense.
Owens said he wants to make it clear the maneuver wasn’t political and if he could reverse it, it sounds like he would. “It’s maybe a decision that shouldn’t have been made,” he told The Denver Post. We agree wholeheartedly.
When the air clears, the Ritter administration might very well retain some of these senior employees. However, that should be a choice, not a guarantee.
State documents clearly state that, in exchange for higher salaries, senior executive service managers are not afforded the right of retention or re-employment. Ritter’s department heads have every right to reject the inappropriate contract language inserted last spring and the subsequent appointments. Owens surely would have done the same thing.
