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The Republican governor’s proposed budget, his last in his final year in office, calls for $111 million in additional funds to pay for higher wages to help retain existing workers and recruit new employees to fill ongoing vacancies.

If approved by lawmakers, Parson will have helped boost pay for workers in 17 different departments by nearly 25% over his six years in office.

In his State of the State speech to a joint session of the House and Senate, Parson took a victory lap for his attempt to bolster a depleted state workforce.

“Nothing we do in this room is possible without the dedicated public servants across the state to implement these ideas. But when I became Governor, state government was quickly becoming underappreciated, understaffed and underpaid,” the governor said in his annual address.

The latest effort is aimed at ensuring the continuity of state services during an inflationary period while attempting to stay competitive with the private sector, which also has seen wage gains.

After hovering near the 50,000 worker level for many years, the governor’s Office of Administration says the current workforce is 44,100 as of the November payroll. There were about 3,700 vacant positions at that time.

In the previous year, there were about 42,000 full-time workers and more than 5,800 vacancies.

Low worker pay has been blamed on service cuts at state mental facilities, fewer beds at nursing homes for veterans and long waiting times at state call centers.

Parson chief of staff Aaron Willard said getting cost-of-living adjustments for state employees has been an achievement of the governor’s tenure.

“We’re seeing lower vacancy and turnover rates,” Willard said Wednesday. “We’re extremely proud of that.”

In addition to the raises, which will go to all state employees, Parson floated a separate plan to help boost high vacancy rates in the state’s prison system, mental health facilities and at youth homes for juvenile offenders.

Under that plan, workers in facilities that stay open around the clock to care for individuals will receive a 1% salary increase for every two years of continuous service capped at 10% for two decades of service.

The spending blueprint also asks lawmakers for $4 million to create a chatbot to assist customers at the Department of Social Services and lower call waiting times. The plan also will reduce the need for workers by removing some manual data entry duties that can be performed by the customers.

At the Department of Mental Health, officials are seeking $4.5 million to hire 20 additional behavioral health residency slots to train more physicians who treat substance use disorders.