Directors of juvenile justice, public safety among agency heads getting pay hikes
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — The heads of seven state agencies will cumulatively get a salary hike of $300,000, as approved Thursday by a legislative committee.
The Agency Head Salary Commission voted unanimously Thursday to give six agency directors who answer to Gov. Henry McMaster the pay hikes he requested to put their salaries in line with what other states are paying, according to a salary study by a consultant based in Charlotte.
The head of the Ethics Commission, which is not in the governor’s Cabinet, also received a raise, as recommended by the ethics board.
Individually, their pay hikes range from nearly $29,000 to more than $58,000. The salary boosts take effect immediately, so they’ll start seeing it in their next paycheck.
They are part of a larger effort in recent years to make the pay for the top jobs in state government more competitive with other states and the private sector.
“(The governor) has confidence in them. If he didn’t have confidence in them, he wouldn’t recommend these salaries,” said House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, who leads the commission that sets the pay for leaders of state agencies. “In exchange, as well, we’ve got confidence in these agency heads.”
How their salaries compare
Most of the governor-appointed directors receiving pay boosts were making less than the minimum amount the commission recommended for their positions, based on a study of similar positions in other states. Three were making slightly more than the minimum, according to data provided by the commission from Korn Ferry consulting.
Receiving the smallest proportional increase is Kevin Shwedo, director of the Department of Motor Vehicles since then-Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him in January 2011. His raise of nearly $29,000 represents just under a 20% increase.
The highest raise goes to Department of Public Safety Director Robert Woods, who was a 29-year veteran of the troubled agency when McMaster asked him to take the helm in 2020.
Woods’ raise, about $58,300, is nearly as much as South Carolina’s median income in 2021, when half the population made less than $59,500, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.
An advocate for teachers said she realizes it’s important to ensure state agencies are led by competent directors, and raising pay is the way to stay competitive and attract quality leaders.
At the same time, three of the raises approved Thursday are higher than the state pays starting teachers, said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.
“I see (the state’s) point of trying to be competitive to get people into these positions, but they need to look at state employees as a whole, not just the state agency heads,” East said.
The state-allowed minimum this school year for first-year teachers is $47,000 — a $4,500 increase from last year and $12,000 above the minimum pay five years ago. Lawmakers have set a goal of raising the salary floor for teachers to $50,000 by 2026 to help stem a growing teacher shortage. But advocates say that goal must be higher.
In letters recommending the pay increases provided to the S.C. Daily Gazette, Gov. Henry McMaster lauded agency directors’ work and pointed to specific challenges they have faced in recent years, as well as their experience in their fields. In most cases, he requested the agency heads make more than the proposed midpoint of the study’s salary ranges.
Eden Hendrick, for instance, “took over an agency in dire need for transformational change” when she was hired as director of the Department of Juvenile Justice in 2022, McMaster wrote.
Hendrick came in after her predecessor resigned following months of criticism and employee protests over their safety. She took over facilities plagued with overcrowding and facing a lawsuit alleging unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
She’s receiving the biggest boost by percentage, with a salary increasing by 36% to $215,702. She had been making about $11,300 less than what was considered the competitive minimum of $169,758.
“She has done an outstanding job under less than perfect circumstances and her leadership continues to inspire others both within and outside the agency,” McMaster wrote.
Inspector General Brian Lamkin has not received a performance-based raise since he was hired in 2017, the governor wrote. That’s despite the Legislature increasing his responsibilities in 2022 when it authorized the office to investigate public schools.
Over the six years that Lamkin has led the agency, which the Legislature created in 2012, he has issued 256 findings and recommendations from his reviews, McMaster wrote, noting the vast majority were implemented.
“I think you will agree that Mr. Lamkin has done an outstanding job as inspector general,” McMaster wrote. “I also think that you will agree that there is no doubt that requests for investigations and reviews will only continue to increase in the future.”
Jeff Perez, who the Commission on Higher Education tapped in June to be its director, will make $240,071, the commission decided Thursday. That’s slightly less than his predecessor, who made $248,100.
That director, Rusty Monhollon, stepped down ahead of his planned retirement after a report from Lamkin’s office found the commission allowed $152 million in unspent state lottery profits to pile up over six years.
None of the agency heads who got raises Thursday were among the highest-paid in the state.
Salaries for the state’s agency heads range from $100,560, for the head of the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, to $296,066, for the Department of Administration director.
All but Lamkin were in the bottom half of pay for state agency heads. The raises will bring five of the seven to the top half, with Woods and Hendrick becoming the 15th and 16th highest-paid agency directors.
Perez will be the 13th highest-paid director in the state.
Previous salary hikes
All seven agency leaders received a 4% pay bump last October, alongside dozens of others. Most had not had a raise in at least three years before that, according to commission staff.
At that same October meeting, the commission approved giving State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel — the state’s top law enforcement officer since 2011 — a $71,000 pay raise, bringing his salary to $267,000 annually.
A similar round of raises went out to state agency heads in 2021. The commission that year approved spending just more than $288,000 to boost the salaries of the heads of the Office of Regulatory Staff, Department of Transportation, Department of Corrections, Department of Administration and State Fiscal Accountability Authority.
In November 2022, the commission voted to raise salaries for six constitutional officers making $92,000 per year.
Their salaries had been set by law and hadn’t budged since 1994, creating a scenario where statewide elected officers were making less, sometimes far less, than the people who reported to them.
So, the Legislature passed a law in 2021 directing the Agency Head Salary Commission to set the pay for statewide officers too, with the exception — at McMaster’s request — of the governor and lieutenant governor. By law, the governor’s salary is still $106,078, and the lieutenant governor, who’s considered a part-time employee, makes $46,500.
The law called for adjusting the pay of the other constitutional officers every four years, starting after the 2022 elections. The adjustments, which took effect with the January 2023 start of their new terms, more than doubled the pay of Attorney General Alan Wilson (to $208,000) and newly elected education Superintendent Ellen Weaver (to $214,00).
The 11-member salary-setting commission is made up of four legislators from each chamber — including the House speaker, Senate president and the chambers’ budget-writing chairmen — and three people appointed by the governor. McMaster’s appointees include a former senator and the former director of the state’s tax-collection agency.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
