Editorial: County officials’ pay raises come at bad time

By The Herald Editorial Board

The timing isn’t helpful.

A vote is just days away on Snohomish County’s Proposition No. 1, the Criminal Justice Sales and Use Tax, which would increase the sales tax in the county by two-tenths of 1 percent, providing additional revenue for the county and cities to hire additional law enforcement and fund social service programs to address drug and alcohol addiction, untreated mental illness and homelessness.

County officials are counting on its passage because it would apply resources directly to those problems. But the county also needs the infusion to offset a budget deficit. County Executive Dave Somers has warned that 3 percent across-the-board budget cuts would be necessary if the measure isn’t approved, resulting in layoffs.

“It’ll be pretty ugly if it doesn’t pass,” Somers told The Herald earlier this month.

Without some context, the news Thursday that county officials will receive pay raises in January, from 2.5 percent up to 19 percent depending on the office, looks pretty ugly, too.

Salaries for six county elected offices and the county council members and its chairman are set every other year by the county’s independent salary commission.

Council members will see a modest 2.5 percent increase, to $117,000 for their current salary of $114,668. Somers, as county executive, will earn $174,226 beginning next year, a 5 percent increase over his current $165,930. Sheriff Ty Trenary will earn $152,329 as of Jan. 1, a 16.4 percent increase over his current pay. And the county assessor, auditor, clerk and treasurer will each be paid $129,786, representing percentage increases between 12.6 percent and 19 percent.

Those are inconvenient figures as the county faces a budget shortfall and asks those who live and work in Snohomish County to dig a little deeper when paying for goods and services.

To be clear, neither the county council nor the executive make the call on salaries. The council will review the salary schedule in August, but will take no vote on it; the salaries go into effect automatically.

The Citizen’s Commission on Salaries of Elected Officials began as an advisory committee in 1997, but since the last changes to the county charter in 2006, the commission has been independent and is the last word on the salaries of elected officials. The commission’s 10 members include six residents, selected by lot by the county auditor; and four members, appointed by the executive, representing four specific fields: business, personnel management, the legal profession and labor.

The process, thankfully, is divorced from politics. But it may be too closely married to what other counties pay their officials.

The salary commission bases its decisions almost exclusively on the salaries paid for similar full-time positions in Clark, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston and Whatcom counties and the cities of Everett and Seattle. A salary comparison used by the commission shows the salaries paid by each county for similar positions, as well as the average.

(And, in coming years, other counties will use Snohomish County’s salary schedule to set their salaries, continuing the cycle upward.)

But, as The Herald’s Noah Haglund noted in his report Thursday, the commission this year relied heavily on the salary schedule used by Pierce County, which has a population similar to Snohomish County. In fact, next year’s salaries of $129,786 for the assessor, auditor and treasurer are exactly what Pierce County is paying those positions this year. To the dollar.

There is some catch-up at work here. The salary commission held all officials’ salaries steady, without even a cost-of-living adjustment for four years, from 2009 through 2012.

The justification often cited is that this is what is necessary to attract good candidates to these positions and retain those officials.

Comparative salaries should be part of the formula used. But these decisions should not be made blindly and without considering other factors, including the cost of living here and in the other counties used for comparison and the county’s projected financial situation.

Our county officials earn their salaries, but pay raises that don’t account for the county’s financial situation just make their jobs harder.