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Social workers board seeks salary and contractual shifts, cites $1M cash balance
Summary
The Board of Examiners for Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists told the Appropriations Subcommittee it needs authority to reclassify and raise staff salaries, to transfer $45,000 from salary authority into contractual services for temporary staffing, and asked to raise the executive director’s salary to $70,000.
The Board of Examiners for Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists requested staffing and budget adjustments from the Appropriations Subcommittee, saying the agency has historically been underfunded despite a cash balance of roughly $1,000,000.
Patrick Johnson, the board’s executive director since October 2024, said the agency licenses about 42,100 social workers and roughly 225 marriage and family therapists. Johnson and budget staff told the committee the board’s five-year average revenue is about $327,000 while five-year average expenditures are about $200,000, explaining the accumulated cash balance.
The board asked the committee to approve three main items: authority to reclassify two filled administrative assistant positions to customer service representative classifications; an increase in the executive director salary to $70,000; and a one-time FY25 internal transfer of $45,000 from salary authority to contractual services to pay for temporary staffing and to address immediate IT/file-sharing needs while recruitment and system upgrades proceed.
Budget staff said the board’s current salaries lag comparable positions in neighboring states and that turnover has been high because of low pay. The request would raise two low-paid staff positions (currently about $22,000 and $28,000) and add roughly $16,000 to salary authority in FY26 to sustain more market-competitive pay.
Johnson and budget staff also asked for modest travel increases to enable in-person meetings and training and for contractual authority to cover temporary accounting or operational services when staff vacancies occur. They estimated an FY26 appropriation request of about $317,295 after the proposed adjustments and said even with the increases the board’s projected revenues will exceed expenditures.
The subcommittee discussed whether the reclassification requests align with State Personnel Board classifications; staff said they had discussed reclassification but a filled position cannot immediately be reclassified while occupied. The committee asked staff to analyze salary comparisons and consider the requested intra-year transfer for FY25.
No formal votes were taken during the hearing.
