Minutes I. Opening Business A. The meeting convened at 9:30 a.m. Members present included Penny Miller, Judge M. Richard Geiger, Justice Mary Muehlen Maring, Rita Hannesson, Dion Ulrich and Carla Kolling. Guests: Robert Bjorklund, Susan Sisk and Ken Purdy. B. Minutes of the February 25, 2002 were approved by consensus with two slight corrections. II. New Business A. Chair Miller summarized the recommended changes made at the February 25 meeting. The members reviewed the relationship of classifications to each other and where they fall within the hierarchy of the system. Members expressed concern about a statement in the final report that goes against current practices for all but one position classification. That being if, during the recruitment process, we are unable to find candidates that meet the minimum qualifications, we simply lower them. Carla Kolling stated that one classification, the administrative assistant, the Chief Justice can waive the education requirement of the candidate. To the best of her knowledge that has been the only situation wherein the minimum requirements were waived. Bob agreed to amend his report to remove the language. Members discussed the new job description developed for secretaries who work directly for district judges. Carla explained that the job description is being proposed as a result of a meeting with secretary II's over the reclassification request submitted in late 2000. Judge Geiger stated that there are approximately 12 secretary II's who are specifically assigned to work with judges. He said the relationship is much like that of a district judge and a court reporter. Further, he stated that the work performed by secretary II's who work directly for district judges is different from other secretary II's especially as relates to court recording. He said they perform recording services for every type of case that a court reporter does for their judge wherein other secretary II's recording is limited to child support enforcement and juvenile court proceedings. He said that those cases are short proceedings in terms of time and are limited in complexity and sophistication. Secretaries to district judges deal with a larger number of witnesses and exhibits and the nature of the people and the issues they have to deal with are more complex compared to other secretary II's. He said the other secretary II's deal with more administrative issues and statistical information. Because of the differences, he would like to see different job titles assigned to each. After a few minor revisions to the new description, a motion was made by Judge Geiger, seconded by Rita Hannesson to adopt the proposed job description, Judicial Secretary to a District Judge, the motion carried. Judge Geiger inquired whether there was a specific ranking order by which the major responsibilities and essential functions are listed on the job description. Mr. Bjorklund said that the responsibilities that are 20-30% of the job are listed first then they are reduced by 5% then 3%. With that in mind, Judge Geiger suggested that the first 3 responsibilities of the secretary II be shifted below number 7 on the job description. Bob was requested to rate the staff attorney position for the Joint Procedure Committee. Subject to the recent changes made to the job description, a motion was made by Justice Maring, seconded by Judge Geiger, to accept the job descriptions dated March 19, 2002 B. Implementation of Plan - Fiscal Implications Susan Sisk provided the members with three different scenarios listing implementation options for the plan. The first reflected that the costs, per biennium, to bring employees who are below the minimum of the new salary range to the minimum, at 100% of market, is $1,148,456.00. She stated that the amount includes the cost of benefits. The second scenario reflects the cost, per biennium, to bring people to the next highest step in the pay grade, after the initial cost of $1,148,456.00, would be $216,884. Lastly, the cost, per biennium, to bring all employees into the new system parallel to their current step in the pay grade would be $5,081,681. Susan provided information on the classifications that would receive the highest percentage of increase under the proposed compensation plan and a comparison of the current minimum and maximum salary to the new proposed minimum and maximum salary for each classification. The members requested Susan to develop two funding proposals with an implementation date of June, 2003. The first proposal would fund the plan at 95% and divide the steps into three zones, and the other would be to fund the plan at 100% but reduce the minimum by 5% and divide the 12 steps into three zones. Carla Kolling introduced Ken Purdy, compensation manager for Central Personnel. Carla informed the members that Ken was invited to speak on the implementation of the department's new compensation plan. Mr. Purdy explained that the compensation philosophy applied to the ND classified service can be described as a combination market and internal equity system meaning that those jobs at similar skill level and responsibility are paid in the same fashion and level. He said that is different from true equal pay for equal work. He stated that they use a point factor system to assign pay grades to jobs. Salary ranges for each pay grade are determined by conducting market surveys of a sample of representative jobs at each grade. He said that there exists approximately 10% difference between grades (midpoint to midpoint) and the ranges are 66% wide for all ranges. He commented that ranges are recalculated in order that all midpoints are within 5% of average market salary for that level of work. He indicated that there is no specific amount of time set to get an employee to mid point in the range, and there is no automatic progression from one step to another. It is an open range system. He said they are doing things to attempt to prioritize movement to the midpoint, but they have 60-75% of their employees below midpoint and approximately 40% at minimum of the range. For this reason he said they had to be very conservative and let the range widen a bit, keep the midpoint low because so many employees were at the bottom. If they would have tried to implement the plan at one time, the funding issue would have put the plan in jeopardy. He stated that the employees are entitled to raises above what is appropriated legislatively. Mr. Purdy explained that they utilized salary data received from government offices from 10 states for the market study including Minnesota and Colorado. The members inquired whether an agency manager could offer a salary above the minimum of the salary range. Mr. Purdy explained that if the agency manager had the money in their budget, they could offer a salary up to midpoint of the range. He said the manager would be expected to seek approval from Central Personnel first, but that the request is more of a formality then any thing. Ken said the number of hires at midpoint is not common. Members reviewed the reclassification request of Marla Laxdal. Mr. Bjorklund explained that his concern with the reclassification request was an issue with the organization of the office, not the rating of the position. He stated that if the organization determines that another layer of supervision is necessary, he would rate the position again. Since the materials were not incorporated into the study and the study did not reflect a change in job duties for Ms. Laxdal's position, a motion was made by Judge Geiger, seconded by Justice Maring to deny the request and suggest that it be addressed during the comment period. Motion passed with one dissent. Penny Miller dissented based on her support of the position. E. Juvenile Court Restructuring Proposal Members requested Greg Wallace to supply them with the criteria for determining whether a court officer II is eligible to advance to a court officer III. Greg will provide that information for the May 6 meeting. Members requested Bob to make the revisions to the final report and have it available for review by the May meeting of the Board. Penny Miller notified the members that she will be resigning as chair of the board effective May 6, 2002. Respectfully submitted, Carla Kolling
C. Central Personnel - Implementation of Compensation Program