(Radio Iowa) — Managers representing Governor Kim Reynolds are negotiating new contracts with four unions that represent state employees. The Republican governor’s administration has just offered the union representing about 24-hundred social workers and scientists in state government a one percent raise in each of the next two years. Reynolds isn’t sending any public signals about the negotiations.

“We’re grateful for our state employees. They’re the boots on the ground. They’re the ones that’s carrying out the mission every single day. They do a great job,” Reynolds told reporters Monday. “I am so proud of our state workers and, you know, it’s no different than what a business does when they’re putting a budget together, so we’re going to do the best that we can with the resources that we have.”

All the unions representing state workers are asking for raises for all employees covered by union contacts. Administrators representing Reynolds will make more counter offers to other unions before the end of the year. Reynolds says “a lot of preliminary work” has been done on her proposed state spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1st. A missing piece of the puzzle was revealed last week. A panel of financial experts set the official estimate of state tax revenue growth during the period at one-point-eight percent.

“We really can’t start to finalize stuff until we get the numbers, which we have those now,” Reynolds says, “and so we’ll sit down and get those kind of hammered out over the next week or two.”

Reynolds will deliver her policy agenda and proposed state budget to legislators on Tuesday, January 15th. Reynolds will be inaugurated to a full, four-year term on Friday, January 18th.