"State auditors might have found a clue about why Texas has a hard time hanging onto new state troopers: The pay stinks in comparison with big-city officers."

Here's the link to Brandi Grissom's report in the Texas Tribune, and here's the link to the State Auditor's report.

It would have been neat to see them add in secondary employment or the lack there of for troopers in rural areas and agents in general. 

I dont understand the Trooper Trainee turnover rate. Isnt that because they quit the academy, and has little to do with pay? Also, the article says Trooper Trainees with less than 4 years experience make $35,700. Thats false. A trooper Trainee makes that, but a Trooper 1 makes almost $48,000. Not saying we dont need more $$$$ in th bank, but the facts should be correct.

It would be nice to get a pay raise. I love the job and would not change it for the world. But it would be nice to have a little more money for taking care of my family.

I will put a positive note on this. I can say in my 17+ years with DPS that pay has gotten a lot better than when I started. Quit complaining people, most Troopers live in rural areas of the state and make more than most citizens in their communities. This job, whether it's Trooper, Agent or Ranger is a damn good career (notice I did not say job). You have to look at the big picture (defined pension, health and take home car, etc.). I don't know how many millions of people are out of work right now, who have a legitimate reason to be complaining. Just FYI, we use to have to pay for lodging and uniforms when we went through the academy, which was 26 weeks long.

Your point is well-taken. I remember a client who got a non-disciplinary transfer to Kingsville years ago, and he was all pissed off and bummed out about it, until he got there. There were plenty of cars to stop, lots of dope to be found, and the same money that was barely enough to get by in the suburbs of Austin allowed him to live like the King of Kingsville.

So in addition to a higher base salary, perhaps that begs a look at premium pay for certain areas - the prevailing school of thought seems to be that we need to pay extra money for "hardship" duty stations on the border, etc. because those are the places that no one wants to go while everyone wants to go to shall we say "nice" towns/cities. 

While it does make some sense, it disregards the difference in the cost of living, what that disparity could lead to, and perhaps one of the underlying factors of wanting to be assigned to a bigger city - maybe it isn't just because it is a nice place to live but because if you make some good contacts, you can get a job with the local PD making a lot more money.

If we had locality pay on top of base salary, a trooper assigned to Austin would be a lot less likely to bail for APD since he would have some parity with his APD counterparts - I would guess that DPS doesn't lose too many troopers to Eagle Pass PD, etc. - doesn't mean there shouldn't be some incentive for "hardship" duty stations, but that should be separate from locality pay for more expensive areas.

And maybe going to locality pay on top of base salary would be a way to level the playing field somewhat in the short term even before everyone gets a raise since that appears unlikely with the current fiscal situation - it would probably make a huge difference in retention and morale if everyone assigned to DFW, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin received an extra say 10-15%, but it wouldn't cost nearly as much as giving a 5-10% raise across the board.

And of course it shouldn't be limited to commissioned personnel which would go along with the director's often mentioned intent of raising salaries for clerks, etc. as well.

Yeah I've never been a big fan of these hardship duty stipends because in most instances, those are the cheapest places to live, and because the stipends themselves don't seem to be much of an attraction. And I don't know if it's manageable to have a system in which you pay an Austin Trooper more than a Kingsville Trooper. The simple answer is to "raise all boats." In fact, the SAO report noted not only that Troopers need about a 16% raise to compete with the other large departments, but their supplemental pay needed to be increased very substantially to be competitive. 

Stipends for special duty assignments....Border Star deployments, temporary Capitol assignments, disaster response, etc., FTO pay and increased certificate pay would help lift everyone's boat.

I don't see why it is not manageable to have locality pay for major metro areas - the Feds do it.  They have base salary and then locality pay for certain metro areas - only DFW and Houston in Texas.  But then everywhere else that doesn't have its own locality pay gets the Rest of US locality pay.  So they get a base plus 20% for DFW, 28% for Houston, or 14% for everywhere else.

While I think their calculations are flawed (Kiplingers recently ranked Austin as having a higher cost of living than Houston although still below the national average), I think the concept works if you use a good methodology to derive the numbers which should be easy enough to figure out just for the handful of major metropolitan areas.