How much do NC General Assembly employees make? What raises did they get? See the data
The North Carolina General Assembly does the public’s business in two large buildings in downtown Raleigh: the Legislative Building and the Legislative Office Building, where more than 600 state employees work in addition to the 170 state lawmakers.
Unlike most state workers, the salaries of those employees don’t show up in the State Personnel Salary database. The News & Observer obtained the pay levels through a public-records request to the legislature. Officials provided the salary levels as they stood on June 30, 2023, before raises provided by a new state budget that became law in October.
Compared with pay from the previous year, 2021-22, legislative staff received a median increase of 3.5% in 2022-23, a raise similar to the one legislators gave most state workers in the budget for that year. About three-fourths of legislative employees received that median increase. Eighty-two employees, however, received a raise of at least 10%, including 55 who did not change positions. Twenty received a raise of more than 20%.
The highest-paid state employee at the Legislative Building is the person who runs the building itself: Legislative Services Officer Paul Coble. The former Raleigh mayor and former Wake County commissioner earns $214,613 a year. Coble received a 3.5% raise from the previous year.
The next highest paid state employee is Brian Fork, who is chief of staff for Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger. Fork earns $200,069. The next three highest paid employees are all division directors, followed by House Speaker Tim Moore’s chief of staff, Neal Inman — all of whom receive salaries between $175,000 and nearly $180,000.
There are 15 state employees in the legislaturewho earn more than $150,000 a year, including other division directors, general counsel and principal clerks.
The lowest-paid state employees at the Legislative Building and Legislative Office Building are responsible for the buildings’ security, food, paperwork and maintenance.
Many assistant sergeants-at-arms, housekeepers, food service workers, security screeners and printing and legislative clerks earn less than $40,000. This includes both full-time and part-time jobs.
You can look up legislative employees’ salaries in the table we’ve provided, including their current salary and what they made in 2022.
This story was originally published October 20, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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