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By Dan Liljenquist
Senator, District 23

SB 126 - State Personnel Management Act Amendments is the repeal of the reappointment register. This is a portion of state law that says when there’s a reduction of state employees, they’re put on the reappointment register. When a job opens up in state government, if an individual meets the minimum qualifications on their resume, then the person on top of that list automatically gets that job.

The challenge is that the departments realize that resumes don’t pick up all the skills and interpersonal abilities of an individual. The concern has been that as people have been put on this list and reappointed to other areas of state government, the departments are saddled with people that they didn’t choose, which results in the people coming in feeling that they’re not wanted because they weren’t chosen.

This doesn’t make sense in modern times. We realize that people have different skills that won’t be shown on a resume. SB 126 repeals the reappointment register so there’s no longer the right to automatically reappoint to a job. Reappointment register is limited to one year. We worked with UPEA and came up with a compromise solution. This solution states that anybody who ends up on the will automatically get preference points*. SB 126 gives about 5-10% additional preference points to former state employees. The practical effect is that this puts them on the top of the interview list, as they should be. It still offers employers the choice to choose which of those people to hire. UPEA is excited about the fact that these rights are permanent and they don’t expire after one year. Because we don’t know how long this economic downturn will last, we don’t know how long until we’ll be hiring state employees again. However, down the road, departments will have a preference when they interview for a position.

I’m pleased to see this bill pass unanimously out of the Senate yesterday. It is now in the House and I believe we have a broad based support for the change. The governor and his public employee associations are on board. This is a great bill and I’m excited to see the positive changes it will bring to our state.


*Preference Points: When you apply for a state job, you take a Proficiency Test. When graded, you receive points that add up as your final score. The people who get the highest points total are the ones that usually get the interviews.

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