While Arkansas teachers, public employees, and state workers are stuck fighting over scraps from our new merit pay system, Gov. Sanders is handing out enormous raises to her political allies. Who’s footing the bill for the lavish bumps? Arkansas taxpayers.

Rewarding hardworking public employees with adjustments for standard of living or to adjust for fair market salaries is a good thing! But these bumps don’t feel like plain ‘ole cost-of-living adjustments. They aren’t modest market corrections. Nope, these are jaw-dropping, five-figure salary hikes. Many are in the office of former-Land-Commissioner-turned-Secretary-of-State-turned-State-Treasurer, Republican John Thurston. You could say he knows a thing or two about making a living off taxpayers.

According to state records, some of Sanders’ allies received raises of $35,000 to $40,000 overnight. Four top officials in Thurston’s office, people who have worked alongside him for years, each got raises well into the mid-to-high $30,000 range. This boosted staffers’ salaries to as much as $180,440 a year.

Sanders’ own chief of staff, Gretchen Conger, now pulls down $173,138.99 annually. And the state’s highest-paid employee at the Crime Lab is now making over $411,000 a year after another crazy bump. Even cabinet secretaries, who are already near the top of the pay scale, got an extra $12,000 each.

Meanwhile, what do most state workers get? A 1% or 3% “merit” raise — or a few hundred bucks a year — for the people who keep government running every day. Public educators? They’re stuck under LEARNS Act chaos while vouchers go universal and private schools rake in taxpayer money with zero accountability. 🤑

Sanders and the Republican supermajority have made their priorities quite clear:

Our taxpayer dollars aren’t meant to fund a rewards program for political loyalists. But Sanders is building, quite successfully, a government that works solely for her friends.

Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 2025