Supervisors support raises for county attorney?s staff

    The Washington County Board of Supervisors agreed to support a 3 percent pay raise for the staff of County Attorney Barb Edmondson during its budget meeting Thursday afternoon. If approved, the staff members who would receive raises are Assistant County Attorney Wyatt Peterson, Office Manager Pat Sinn and Administrative Assistant Alicia Pacha. Edmondson would not receive a raise.

    The pay raises are larger than the 1 percent raise limit the supervisors requested of department heads. To compensate for the increase, Edmondson offered to end the print subscriptions for the law library in the courthouse, which would save the county $10,000 annually. If that were done, the overall budget increase for the county attorney?s office would be less than 1 percent.

    The county attorney?s staff does not receive automatic step increases in their salary from year to year as is the case in other county departments. Edmondson said that she gives raises solely on merit. She said her staff are hard workers and that they go the extra mile by working nights and weekends.

    ?Wyatt and I are covering in excess of our regular job,? said Edmondson. ?What I mean by that is working after hours to do search warrants. It?s working weekends because you have a trial the next week. Those are the kinds of things I look at when I look at what my staff is doing overall. I certainly would advocate the 3 percent for Wyatt. His competence, ability and willingness to do that kind of work make a difference. It takes that much more off me.?

    Her staff deserves the raises because of the amount of work they do, said Edmondson.

     ?They?re carrying a load that is bigger than a single job,? said Edmondson. ?I can say that each and every one of my staff turns out more work than in some comparable private sector jobs, because we have to.?

For the full article, see our Feb. 8 print edition.