The Senate approved its final version of the FY ’19 state budget last week. Legislators filed amendments to create a student loan repayment program for qualified human service workers and study the salary disparity that exists between community-based human services workers and state employees doing similar work. The following action was taken on each amendment:
- Amendment to study pay disparity. Sen. Sal DiDomenico’s amendment (#460) was rejected. The amendment called for a study of the wage disparity between community-based human services workers and state workers doing similar jobs.
- Amendment to create a student loan repayment program. After speaking to colleagues on the senate
floor about the need to create a loan repayment program for human service workers, Sen. Eric Lesser withdrew amendment #613.
While neither amendment passed, there are still reasons for hope! The Council’s fair pay for comparable work bill is still pending before the Committee on Ways & Means. Additionally, the Council’s bill to create a student loan repayment program is still pending before the Committee on Ways & Means and language to create the program was also inserted in the House’s redrafted opioid legislation.
We still have plenty of achievements of which to be proud and a number of opportunities to make fair pay and student loan repayment a reality before the end of the legislative session. We’ll have more information on those efforts in the near future.
Thank you again for your advocacy and interest.
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