Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki told the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Monday his staff is paid as much as 40 percent less than comparable positions in other constitutional offices.
He said he intends to ask the committee to either make up that difference, or give him the same flexibility to set job descriptions and pay rates as the governor's office has.
Several senior staffers moved from the treasurer's office with Krolicki when he left that position.
"These people are literally taking a 30 percent to 40 percent pay cut to be with me," he told the committee.
Krolicki said while the chiefs of staff in the other constitutional offices are all paid more than $100,000 a year, the lieutenant governor's chief of staff receives $66,830.
He said the total difference between the top five positions in his office and the average for the secretary of state, treasurer, controller and attorney general is $161,700 a year.
The lieutenant governor has a total of six employees, by far the smallest constitutional office.
By comparison, the attorney general has 230 staff, the secretary of state 139, the controller 45 and the treasurer 22 positions.
Asked why someone supervising just five people should make as much as someone supervising more than 100, Krolicki said supervision "is just part of the activity of a chief of staff." He said he is planning to do many things as lieutenant governor, especially in the economic development area.
Krolicki added that, while the lieutenant governor works part time, his staff is full time and should be compensated similarly to comparable posts in the other offices.
His alternative, he said, would be to do for the lieutenant governor what the Legislature did for the governor's office - convert the classified and unclassified employees to nonclassified.
That would allow him to set both the number of positions in the office and the compensation for each position, as long as he stayed within the total approved budget. In other words, he could leave his sixth position unfilled and divide the salary for that post among the five current staffers.
He received little comment from the committee other than a statement from Chairman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, that "we have to talk about this."
• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.