The executive director of the state Board of Examiners in Counseling said Friday that he hopes to complete his work for the board within the next few months, after the Legislative Council approved a $70,000 annual salary for him.
With no discussion, the Legislative Council approved a salary level for board Executive Director Alan Pogue of Sherwood that’s $10,000 a year less than the board requested. Pogue said Wednesday that he’s not going to stay in the post for a $70,000 annual salary.
Pogue’s longtime predecessor, Ann K. Thomas, was paid $65,000 a year before she retired at the end of lastyear. Pogue was paid $65,000 a year for the first six months of this year before a 2 percent cost-of-living increase boosted his salary to $66,300 on July 1.
The board regulates about 2,000 counselors in mental health, marriage and family therapy.
“After we complete the move [of the agency from Magnolia to central Arkansas] and have the office running smooth, I hope the board re-advertises the position accepting master’s level applicants,” said Pogue, who has a doctorate.
“Opening it up to that level may bring on several excellent candidates. And they won’t be intimidated by moving the office,” he said.
Board Chairman Mark Coffman of Russellville said the board members recognize that Pogue “is taking a financial hit by taking this position at the rate recently approved … and we are respectful of his personal and professional needs.
“I’m confident that any future decisions by Dr. Pogue or the board will be made after careful discussion and consideration,” he said.
After the Legislative Council’s meeting, state Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, who proposed the $70,000 annual salary for Pogue, said he’s not sure that the board’s executive director needs to have a doctorate.
Jean compared Pogue’s job with that of the directors of the Social Working Licensing Board and Board of Psychology. They are paid $45,602 and $41,280 a year, respectively, according to the Bureau of Legislative Research. He noted that Pogue’s predecessor was paid $48,000 a year until her salary was increased to $65,000 a year in June 2011. To lawmakersWednesday, Pogue compared his job with that of the directors of the state Board of Nursing and Board of Accountancy and said Arkansas’ Board of Examiners in Counseling wants to continue to be a national leader in the profession.
The director of the Board of Nursing is paid $103,795 and director of the Board of Accountancy is paid $85,312, according to the Bureau of Legislative Research.
Pogue apologized Wednesday to lawmakers for impugning the motives of Rep. Jim Nickels, D-Sherwood, in an email to board members after last month’s Legislative Council. The council last month asked the Personnel Subcommittee to reconsider its recommendation to set Pogue’s salary at $75,000 a year. That salary, Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain Home, said, represented a compromise between the $70,000 salary recommended by the bureau’s staff and the $80,000salary recommended by the state Office of Personnel Management’s staff.
Pogue wrote in his email dated June 21 that Nickels showed up at the council’s June21 meeting and “apparently his one purpose was to sabotage the personnel subcommittee’s decision on the board,” adding “This all stems back to Representative Nickels and his hatred of me.”
Nickels disputed Pogue’s allegations.
In last November’s general election, Nickels survived a challenge from Pogue, a Republican, for his House seat.
On April 12, the board hired Pogue, who resigned from the board to become its interim director in January, as its executive director in a 5-3 secret ballot vote. The board members last week confirmed their vote to hire Pogue as executive director by raising their hands, after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette questioned whether voting with slips of papers without the board members writing their names on them complied with the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
Pogue said Friday that the board asked him, “in an attempt to placate Rep. Nickels,” to close down his private practice by June 1 and he did so.
“Now I am again allowed to work a few hours a week tomake up the difference in lost pay,” he said.
“It probably won’t take more than a couple of months to rebuild my practice when I go back to it full time. And my practice is much more profitable than the director position with less hours, less hassle and more freedom,” Pogue said. “I am only doing the director job to help out the board and the profession.”
Nickels said he proposed and then withdrew a measure in this year’s legislative session to bar the board’s executive director from engaging in the private practice of counseling that the executive director is required to regulate.
He said he did so to send a message to the board that whoever it hired shouldn’t be a counselor and executive director at the same time.
Pogue said he “should be emotionally distanced enough” by Labor Day to make a wise decision about whether to run again for the state House seat that Nickels has held since 2009. Nickels is barred from running for re-election under the state’s term limits amendment.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/20/2013