Yesterday Administrative Office of the Courts director Laurie Dudgeon sent out a mass email to the hundreds of employees within the AOC who did not receive a fancy 20% pay raise.

Take a look for yourself. I’ll offer it up without much commentary:

November 12, 2009
From: Laurie K. Dudgeon, Director
To: All AOC Employees

There were several misperceptions created by the Nov. 9 Herald-Leader article titled “Some court workers get 20% raises” and I’d like to address the inaccuracies in the article, which follows this e-mail.

The fundamental misperception created by the article is that the AOC is giving exorbitant annual raises. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Per Herald-Leader reporter Beth Musgrave’s request, the AOC provided a list of the salary increases that were given between May and October 2009. The 12 salary increases were based solely on promotions and additional responsibilities, which are entirely separate from the annual raises defined by the Judicial Branch budget.

These personnel actions were taken after careful deliberation about how to fill several key positions. They occurred primarily as a result of two situations that created a series of vacancies — my appointment to AOC director and the decision to save money by restructuring the Department of Facilities instead of replacing the executive officer.

By not filling the AOC deputy director position and abolishing two other positions, the AOC realized $169,491 in annual savings. The total cost for these 12 actions is $71,347 a year. Even in this economic environment, providing salary increases to employees who are promoted from within an organization is common business practice throughout state government and in the private sector.

I want to reassure you that the AOC made these 12 decisions the same way we try to make all decisions. We are taking a thoughtful, measured approach that balances our budget constraints with an ongoing commitment to serve the people who depend on the courts.

These actions support our goal for the AOC to become a leaner, stronger organization that delivers outstanding customer service in a more efficient manner.

Laurie K. Dudgeon
Director
Administrative Office of the Courts

Needless to say, that email blast has a ton of AOC folks upset. A ton. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who have reached out to me in the past 24 hours.

On a juicy note: Remember those 47 people who were laid off in September? Pressure on Chief Justice Minton from the other Justices (et al) certainly got to him. 43 of those 47 have been rehired. More than half of them also received a raise – some as much as 15%, according to AOC sources. Meaning the mass layoffs within AOC have potentially cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing salary.