The West Virginia House of Delegates is advancing a bill that would provide locality pay for state troopers in three counties. The counties are not specified in HB 4473—that would be up to the state police superintendent—but they would likely be Jefferson, Berkeley and Morgan in the Eastern Panhandle.
The bill authorizes the superintendent to pay up to $10,000 a year more to troopers stationed in those counties. The bill says the point of the legislation is to “offset the high cost of living in certain counties.”
Hopefully, the higher pay would help with retention. Major Shallon Oglesby told the Finance Committee this week that Eastern Panhandle detachments lost three troopers just in the last three weeks. “We are having a terrible time with recruiting and retention of troopers in that particular area,” she said.
Locality pay is not a new concept. The federal government has been doing it for years to offset discrepancies in salaries in particular regions of the country. Currently, Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan and Hampshire counties are grouped in with the Washington, D.C. locality, which boosts pay for federal employees by 32 percent over their base.
Federal locality pay is not linked specifically to the cost of living. Instead, the formula compares wages of non-federal employees with federal employees and the locality pay is supposed to make up the difference.
However, it is generally true that where wages are higher, so is the cost of living.
Delegate Larry Rowe (D, Kanawha) said the state police locality pay in three counties can be viewed as a pilot project. “I think it should be seen clearly as a first step toward equalizing pay.”
If locality pay helps attract and retain troopers in the Eastern Panhandle, then schoolteachers and staff should be next. School systems in those eastern-most counties are constantly losing personnel to Maryland and Virginia where the pay is better.
Locality pay, whether for troopers or teachers, will trigger complaints from those who live in other parts of the state. “Why are they making more than I am even though we are doing the same job and have the same years of service?”
The answer is found in the difference in the cost of living. A house in Berkeley County is much more expensive than a comparable home in most other parts of the state. The goal of locality pay is not to give any employees an advantage, but rather to eliminate the financial disadvantage.