In my job with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services Office of Aging and Disability Services (OADS), I see firsthand the urgent need to provide services to help aging Mainers.

The work we do at OADS is essential to the health and well-being of Maine families and their loved ones. My co-workers and I support and enhance services to assist aging Mainers and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities so they can live, work and thrive in their communities.

We regulate and support nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to serve those Mainers who can no longer maintain their health and safety independently. The workers in the Adult Protective Services unit of OADS investigate threats to the safety and health of elderly Mainers and those with disabilities. An Adult Protective Services caseworker is a lifeline to vulnerable Mainers to protect them from emotional, physical and financial abuse.

Yet vacancies in vital positions at OADS and other state departments make it difficult for us to deliver these kinds of essential services.

In Maine, pay for state employees lags far behind both private and public sector workers who do similar work throughout New England. Two state studies, one in 2009 and another in 2020, show state workers are underpaid by 15% on average. It’s even worse for state workers such as chemists, maintenance mechanics, civil engineers, office assistants and associates, customer service representatives for state parks, and workers at the state-run schools.

The compensation and classification system for state employees was put in place in the late 1970s. When the system was created, the Legislature also included in state law a requirement for the Bureau of Human Resources to provide active reviews, management and oversight of the entire compensation and classification system every 10 years. Yet the state has failed to hold itself accountable in doing this basic maintenance, and both state workers and Mainers who count on state services are paying the price for this intransigence.

Nearly one in six positions in state government is vacant due to the state’s inability to recruit and retain workers at the current pay rates. Another consequence: State workers are experiencing impossible workloads. Transportation workers at MaineDOT reported plowing for 30 to 35 hours straight last winter due to understaffing. Maine’s 911 dispatchers often are required to work 16 hours straight with only eight hours off before returning for another 16-hours shift, also due to understaffing. Such grueling schedules must stop before someone makes a mistake or gets hurt.

Many state workers joined me on May 12 in asking the Legislature’s State and Local Government Committee to support L.D. 1854, requiring the state to complete and implement the classification and compensation study that was started in 2019 but never finished. At that hearing, 23 state park managers shared their concerns about the low pay for state park workers and the difficulty in hiring for yet another year of likely record-breaking attendance.

“Currently, pay begins at $15/hour — for rangers, assistant rangers, laborers and customer representative assistants alike,” the park managers wrote to the committee. “As a result of this salary compression, a starting employee now makes nearly as much as an employee with several years of experience. Even then, the salary offered, both for the new employee and the experienced staff member, is often less than the salary offered (at) local fast-food restaurants.

“When combined with the housing crisis that is already plaguing Maine, the result of this low pay and skewed pay scale is an inability to recruit and retain staff. Staff are, quite understandably, leaving the parks in droves.”

My co-workers and I are encouraged that the State and Local Government Committee’s majority report on L.D. 1854, An Act to Complete and Implement the Comprehensive Review of the Classification and Compensation System for Executive Branch Employees, would require completion of the stalled study by Jan. 31, 2024, and implementation by July 1, 2024. It would establish a State Employee Stabilization Fund to help fund closing the state employee pay gap. It would require the state to perform a compensation study every four years and report the results to the Legislature. It would require the state to conduct a comprehensive classification review every decade.

The Legislature and the Mills administration cannot kick the pay gap down the road any longer. It’s past time to close the pay gap and bring the compensation and classification system into the 21^st century to protect the essential services we all rely on. The Legislature must pass L.D. 1854.