Topeka ? House Speaker Mike O’Neal pulled his chief of staff from a Kansas City law firm. He committed to providing a $90,000 salary, and the state made a payment of $20,000 when his new top aide started.

Brent Haden is not the Legislature’s highest paid employee, nor is his salary as O’Neal’s chief of staff as large as his predecessor’s.

Yet, the $20,000 payment to Haden came under intense scrutiny during the waning days of the Legislature’s annual session, as legislators wrestled with the state’s budget problems. Critics called it a bonus, but O’Neal said it’s an advance on Haden’s salary.

One factor was crucial in creating the buzz. O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican and other leaders of the House’s GOP majority pushed briefly and unsuccessfully to cut the pay of all state employees by 5 percent to help keep the next state budget balanced.

Payroll records from the Department of Administration show that Haden, a 31-year-old Harvard-educated attorney, formally joined O’Neal’s staff on Jan. 5, about a month after House Republicans designated O’Neal as speaker. On Jan. 10, Haden received his $20,000 payment.

The intense criticism arose four months later, when Democratic legislators circulated a newspaper report about the payment in the final days of their session.

“I’m not sure why that’s newsworthy,” O’Neal said this week. “Basically, it’s an advancement on his salary.”

But Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said Haden’s salary and the one-time payment are well worth noting because of the House GOP’s push for a salary cut for government workers. Hensley said such a proposal was hypocritical, given Haden’s arrangement.

Proposed pay cuts

Republicans noted that the House GOP plan would have cut legislative aides’ pay along with that of other government workers.

“Late in the game, we were even thinking about a sliding scale that had a percentage cut that was higher for the more highly compensated,” O’Neal said.

Haden’s $90,000 salary does make him the best-paid aide to a legislative leader, but he’s the only attorney. Records show Michelle Butler, who was chief of staff for O’Neal’s predecessor as speaker, had a salary of $93,500 — and received a $15,000 one-time “pay rate adjustment” — when she left.

The directors of the Legislature’s research, law-drafting and auditing staffs earn more than $115,000 a year, and the official in charge of their administrative services receives almost $97,000.

Payroll records also show at least four dozen instances in the past four years in which an aide to a legislative leader received a one-time payment, though Haden’s was the largest on the list.

Those payments totaled more than $144,000. Most of them were listed as pay rate adjustments, and the Department of Administration says the Legislature often uses that term for a bonus.

‘Total package’

Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt said his bonuses are based on performance. Michael White, the chief of staff for Senate President Steve Morris, a Hugoton Republican, said Morris gave him $7,000 in bonuses last year rather than a larger salary because, “He wanted to make sure that the money was there.”

But Schmidt said bonuses are “part of a total package” for aides, and White noted that the Legislature must compete with private employers for talent. Also, White noted, aides can be fired at will — or lose their jobs, as Butler did, when their bosses leave office.

“We’re giving up any job security that exists,” White said.

The executive branch has a policy, imposed by governor’s executive orders, against paying bonuses, though the Legislature overrode it to provide one-time payments across state government in December 2007.

But pay raises aren’t prohibited, and Troy Findley, the governor’s chief of staff has seen his salary increase 41 percent since he took the job in July 2005, at a starting annual rate of just under $71,000.

His last raise, on Jan. 18, was 9.6 percent and boosted his annual pay to $100,000 as the top staffer for then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. She resigned April 28 to become U.S. health and human services secretary.

Findley stayed on with Gov. Mark Parkinson, and Parkinson named him lieutenant governor, though he won’t get additional pay for the new title.