The state’s merged public college system released details Friday on merit pay increases, which averaged 2 percent for each of 278 officials and administrators.
The raises, which were awarded Friday but are retroactive to early September, are in addition to the 3 percent cost-of-living increase the Board of Regents for Higher Education granted these non-union employees in July.
This marks the first raise for most non-union employees in the regents’ system since the 2010-11 fiscal year. Most employees — both union and non-union — throughout state government also are receiving pay hikes for the first time in two years. Nearly all workers forfeited raises in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 fiscal years in accordance with a major concessions deal negotiated by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and related legislation enacted by the General Assembly.
Friday’s release also completes a reversal by leadership of the regents’ system, which originally had denied a request from The Mirror for information on the merit raises.
System President Gregory Gray said earlier this month that he remained convinced that the raises needed to be disclosed.
“I am still not clear if we are legally obliged to do this or not,” he said. “However, as I continue further discussions with our Board of Regents, one of the things I wanted to do in my era of being president is restore trust and total integrity in the system, and that means total transparency. Therefore, we decided based on that very important thing, weighing the privacy issue versus the paramount issue of transparency,” to disclose the information.
Two leaders of the legislature’s Higher Education Committee and an open government group comprising news media executives — The Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information — had criticized the system’s initial reluctance to disclose the raises.
(See the new salaries of the 278 managers and administrators from the regents’ system listed below.)
The system, which includes the four state universities, 12 community colleges and the online Charter Oak State College, serves about 92,000 students.
The University of Connecticut provided The Mirror with information on merit raises for its administrators earlier this month.
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