I was looking up information about the ACE awards for a post I wanted to do on Stumbo when I came across KAR 2:034 from the state's regulation on compensation. Section 11.1 of the regulations states the qualifications for receiving an ACE award.
(1) On the 16th day of a month, an appointing authority may grant a salary adjustment of up to ten (10) percent of the grade midpoint to a full-time employee's base pay as an adjustment for continuing excellence award (ACE) under the following conditions:
(a) The employee has an established annual increment date;
(b) The employee has worked at least twenty-four (24) consecutive months, twelve (12) consecutive months of which shall have been served in the department granting the award;
(c) The employee has not received an ACE award or a distinguished service award in the preceding twenty-four (24) months or an employee recognition award (ERA) in the preceding twelve (12) months; and
(d)
1. The employee has demonstrated a sustained level of exceptional job performance; or
2. The employee has assumed a significant level of additional job responsibilities or duties consistent with the assigned classification, and has performed them in an exceptional manner; or
3. The employee has acquired professional or technical skills or knowledge through department directed or authorized attainment of a job related licensure, certification, or formal training that will substantially improve job performance.
Subsection (c) clearly states that an employee can only receive an ACE award once every two years. Hang on a second. Let's rewind to the story about Johnathan Miller's assistant, Brooke Parker, and her mysterious pay raises.
At issue were two salary increases, amounting to a total of $566.92 a month, awarded to Parker in June 2004. Crall said the raises should never have been granted because there was no written justification to support them.
Dan Egbers, the Personnel Cabinet's new general counsel, agreed in a letter issued Wednesday that the pay raises weren't properly documented, but said they can be resubmitted to the cabinet as a bonus known to state employees as an ACE, or Award for Continuing Excellence.
I remember now. The solution was to clean up the sloppy paper work by submitting ACE awards to explain the two raises. But doesn't the law clearly state that an individual can only receive one ACE award every two years. It seems to me that these actions "approved" by the personnel cabinet are ILLEGAL.
Wait a second before jumping to conclusions! Maybe 1 ACE award was used for both raises? Let's assume that is true for the moment. Her raises were roughly $567 a month. That translates to a yearly raise of $6,800. The only problem is that ACE regulations state that the raise can not exceed more than 10% of the employee's grade midpoint. For both raises to be covered by a single ACE award the mid-point salary for her pay grade would have to be at least $68,000 a year.
After perusing the state's pay grades, it is clear that Parker would have had to have held at least a grade 18 job to get that level of a raise she received. So what type of job is a grade 18? I looked into the state IT jobs and found zero information system jobs which had a grade 18 or higher pay scale.
I find it hard to believe that 4 years out of school Brooke held a grade 18 job. Therefore if it was 1 ACE award then the amount of the raise was illegal.
Any way one dices it, the actions taken by Miller were ILLEGAL. I am confident the Democratic AG will open an investigation into the matter and the MSM will make this a continual front page story until the case is resolved.
