State leaders authorize $230,000 for KU Med pay raises

The University of Kansas Medical Center campus in Kansas City, Kan., shown from 39th Street facing east, is pictured June 11, 2017.

? Gov. Sam Brownback and legislative leaders on Monday approved spending $230,000 more out of the state general fund to fully cover pay raises at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.

As part of this year’s budget bill, lawmakers authorized 2.5 percent pay raises for employees who had worked for the state less than five years and 5 percent raises to veteran employees who had worked more than five years but had not had any kind of pay raise in that time.

Budget director Shawn Sullivan explained that KU Med was initially given $532,000 to pay for its raises based on information the university had supplied to the state.

KU officials, however, said Monday that the university had miscalculated and had inadvertently left out the cost of 5 percent raises for 203 KU Med employees who have not had a pay raise in more than five years.

Kelly Reynolds, KU’s director of state relations, said it took a considerable amount of time for finance offices at the medical school and the Lawrence campus to sift through personnel records to determine which employees qualified for the raises.

Meeting as the State Finance Council Monday, Brownback and legislative leaders also authorized spending $150,000 in emergency management funds to pay the costs incurred by the state fire marshal’s office providing disaster relief in Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Officials said they would seek reimbursement of those costs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.