Sweetening The Pot

Carter boosts his staff's pay

Christmas has come a little early for 389 members of the White House staff--all those, in fact, who earn less than $47,500. Santa Carter has boosted their pay by 7.05%, effective Oct. 9. While many of the staffers no doubt deserved a merit raise, the blanket increase--to a top of $47,500 for some people--lifted Washington eyebrows. Quite a few who got the increases had held modest to middling jobs before joining the White House staff, made fractions of their current pay, and were hired less for their professional ability than for the political help they gave the Carter campaign.

For example, Richard Hutcheson, 26, who was a $6,000-a-year research assistant at the Democratic National Committee before he became a Carter campaign coordinator, now earns more than $45,475 as White House staff secretary, keeping paper flowing smoothly. Similarly, Phil Wise, 26, a former director of interns in Carter's Georgia administration, was an effective campaign aide. But his $45,000 salary seems rather generous for a deputy appointments secretary.

And there are others: James Fallows, 28, was the editor of the Washington Monthly at $20,000 before he was appointed Carter's top speechwriter; the latest raise put his gross up to $45,000. Says one former Carter staffer: "That is quite a salary to pay a speechwriter for a President who throws away prepared texts and ad-libs." Among Rosalynn Carter's aides, Social Secretary Gretchen Poston, 44, and Personal Assistant Madeline MacBean, 40, each earn $42,800--a bit plush for such fringe jobs.

The raises were given by Carter because other Federal Government workers and military personnel were eligible for increases under the Federal Pay Comparability Act. The measure was intended to make the wages for Government work roughly equivalent to that for similar jobs in industry. In fact, except for Cabinet-level and sub-Cabinet officers, the Government now often pays much more than private business.

For the President, who promised during the campaign to make the White House an example of economy in Government, granting the raises made little political sense. After pleasing the public in January by banning limousines and door-to-door pickup service for his aides, he boosted his major assistants' salaries in March by roughly 25%. The top White House salary was increased from $44,600 to $56,000, but Carter escaped major criticism by pointing out that the raise was $1,500 less than the maximum authorized by Congress. While the latest raises also had congressional approval, their across-the-board nature hardly re-establishes the President's image as a careful minder of the Government till. In any event, one former aide had an explanation for the pay boost: "People realize that they will take a drastic pay cut if they lose their jobs. What it adds up to is a backhanded way of building loyalty."

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