Attorney General's News Release

October 3, 2008

Nixon says Missouri should stop penalizing state employees deployed overseas in National Guard, Reserves

32 states make up difference on paychecks; Missouri not among them

Jefferson City, Mo. - The state of Missouri needs to support its employees who are deployed overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and other locations as members of the National Guard or Reserves by ensuring that they continue to receive their full salaries, Attorney General Jay Nixon said today. Nixon said those employee-soldiers overseas and their families back home in Missouri should not suffer a financial penalty because they have been deployed to serve our country.

Nixon says Missouri should make those employee-soldiers whole by making up the difference between their military pay and what they earn in their work for the state, and proposed two solutions.

"It is shameful that Missouri hasn't followed the lead of most other states in supporting the Missourians and their families who are making sacrifices for state and country to protect us," Nixon said. "These citizen-soldiers did not hesitate to go to dangerous places on the other side of the world when their country needed them. We should not hesitate any longer to support them and their families with full pay."

State law (Section 105.270) only provides paid leave for the first 120 hours for those state employees called up for military service. After that, they only receive military pay that is often substantially lower than their state salaries. Current deployment of members of the National Guard and Reserves often are many months long.
Nixon says the solution could come through one of two avenues:

• The General Assembly can amend Section 105.270 to provide for compensation to state employee-soldiers in the amount of the difference between state pay and guard pay; or
• The Governor can issue an executive order - as was done in Illinois and other states - that provides for the difference in compensation to be made up.

Members of the National Guard who are state employees and who are affected by the pay differential have sought legal clarification recently from the Attorney General's Office on the issue, Nixon said.

"We shouldn't ask these men and women to spend many months away from their families to protect our country and then shortchange them on payday," Nixon said. "Action can and should be taken to meet this obligation, and is long overdue."

Nixon noted that while some state employee-soldiers must take a pay cut of as much as $20,000 when deployed overseas, other Missouri state employee-soldiers continue to receive a full state salary in addition to their full military pay when they are deployed. Those state employee-soldiers include elected officials and some other officials.