A trooper or game warden at the top of the state pay scale now makes $98,085 a year, about $14,900 less than the average top pay for officers in Texas’ seven largest local police agencies, the State Auditor’s Office reported this month.
The gap has more than tripled in two years. The auditor’s report on the state’s law enforcement salary schedule puts the state’s top base pay for journey-level positions, such as troopers and game wardens, 15.2 percent below that local average. In November 2024, the same comparison showed a gap of 4.3 percent.
The finding matters because the Legislature, which convenes in January, will set state pay for the 2028-2029 budget period. The auditor estimates that bringing every rate in the schedule up to the local average would cost about $90.3 million in each year of that period. The report does not say lawmakers must act. It says the salary rates “may need to be adjusted” for the state to stay competitive with the seven departments.
The State Classification Team, a unit of the auditor’s office, compared the state’s maximum base pay with maximums at the police departments of Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, plus Harris County. Each employs more than 1,000 commissioned officers. The figures are as of June 2026.
The shortfall shows at every rank the report measured. For journey-level officers, the local average maximum is $112,981, against $98,085 for the state. For sergeants and similar senior positions, the averages are $125,614 locally and $107,038 at the state. For lieutenants, the figures are $140,714 and $120,695. For captains, they are $160,978 and $138,581. The report puts the state’s maximum 17.4 percent below the local average for sergeants, 16.6 percent for lieutenants and 16.2 percent for captains.
The local numbers vary widely. Austin’s journey-level maximum is $136,490, the highest of the seven. San Antonio’s is $99,072 and El Paso’s is $98,421, which put those two departments close to the state’s $98,085.
The comparison covers the top of each pay range. The auditor’s team also weighed supplemental pay, and the report recommends ten changes to law enforcement job titles for the 2028-2029 period. The schedule covered 81 job classification titles in the 2026-2027 budget period.
Another recent State Auditor’s Office report, an efficiency audit of the State Bar of Texas’s continuing education tracking, found a long-running error affecting more than 1,350 attorneys.
Lawmakers will decide in the 2027 session whether to close some, all or none of the $90.3 million-a-year gap.