Report: State awards bonuses in budget crunch

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Despite leading a team charged with saving Pennsylvania money, state Treasurer Barbara Hafer has awarded more than $180,000 in bonuses to her top managers, a newspaper reported.
Hafer, who led Gov. Ed Rendell's transition team on state finances after the general election and before his inauguration in January, handed out bonuses ranging from $8,080 to $9,680 to 31 of her office's top managers, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Tuesday.
The bonuses are really part of a cost-cutting policy implemented by Hafer, said Robert Gentzel, her director of communications. Rather than increasing base salaries based on merit raises, Hafer awarded lump-sum bonuses to keep salaries at 2001 levels, Gentzel said.
The bonuses come after Hafer gave each of her managers a 2.25-percent longevity pay bonus in January. The total cost of those payments was $351,357.
The office had previously based managers' merit increases on the raises given to union employees employed at treasury. Gentzel says the office has saved $926,616 a year by not following union raises.
Taxpayer groups criticized Hafer's bonuses as ill-timed because state lawmakers are asking state employees to do without pay raises this year because of the state's troubled finances.
The bonuses are "just unbelievable. That's an 8-percent increase. It's four times the rate of inflation," said Matthew Brouillette, president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based think tank.