Iowa County Compensation Board recommends 13%, 15% pay raises for elected county officials

MARENGO — The Iowa County Compensation Board recommended 13% and 15% pay increases for elected county officials during Friday’s meeting of the Iowa County Board of Supervisors.

County supervisors agreed that the county can’t afford the salaries suggested by the compensation board.

County compensation boards consist of representatives for elected county officials who review the salaries of the officials every year and recommend increases based on salaries of officials in comparable agencies.

Iowa law requires the county compensation board to provide documentation to the Board of Supervisors showing how the compensation board determined the recommended compensation schedule, providing the applicable compensation information for comparable officers in other counties of this state, other states, private enterprise and the federal government.

“Everyone made a … very good presentation in accordance with the law,” said Kayne Robinson, compensation board chairman, who submitted the compensation board’s report last week.

Representatives for the sheriff (Robinson), the county attorney (Jim Claypool), the auditor (Jake Rabe), the recorder (Cindy Ballard) and the treasurer (Janet Behrens), voted to accept the recommendations of a 15.54% salary increase for the sheriff and 13.365% increases for other county elected officials.

Representatives for the county supervisors (Mark Swift and Gary Boland) voted against the recommendations.

The suggested increases would raise the sheriff’s salary from $125,800 to $145,349 and the county attorney’s salary from $101,739 to $115,336.

The auditor’s, recorder’s and treasurer’s salaries would increase from $75,354 to $85,425.

Supervisors’ salaries would jump from $39,267 to $44,515.

As the representative for the sheriff, Robinson looked at salaries for police chiefs in Newton, Indianola and Boone as well as salaries for the state patrol and for the Cedar Rapids commander, he said.

Other representatives did the same thing for the positions they represented, said Robinson. “It’s my observation that each of the representatives were pretty careful in looking at appropriate salaries,” he said.

Iowa County Supervisor Jon Degan, who attended the comp board meeting, said the numbers don’t take into account how much the county pays for health insurance.

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Robinson said public salaries are “conveniently available,” while other benefit information may not be.

“I appreciate the diligence of the … committee ,” said Degen. “[But] when it was mentioned we didn’t follow what the recommendation was last year, there was no mention [that] our health insurance went up 14%.”

Iowa County provides free single and free family insurance policies, said Degen. “That went up 14% last year, and as a subcommittee we talked about how we could do this and try to bring up salaries as well.”

The committee felt it was important to cover the full increase of the health insurance, he said.

“We just felt we couldn’t lay more responsibility on the county,” said Degen. “if anybody thinks we weren’t thinking about it, we were.”

“There’s no criticism of anybody in this thing,” said Robinson. “But I think we could make the same conclusions if we look at the other cities here. Newton, Indianola, Norwalk …. they all had similar problems to deal with …. I have no reason to believe that Iowa County would be any different.”

“There was a comment made at the [compensation board] meeting,” said Degen. “But we are trying to work very hard at it.”

Supervisor Abby Maas, who also attended the comp board meeting, said the comment Degen referred to was that supervisors gave “zero consideration” to the salary recommendations last year.

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“We sent hours and hours on this budget,” said Maas, “trying to find a way to fund raises, and it just wasn’t in the cards.”

Maas also said the numbers the comp board used to recommend salaries are inflated. Instead of using the salary of the highest paid lieutenant, who receives an additional stipend for work at the university, the comp board should have used the base pay of $122,000.

“I would have preferred it be tied to the $122,000 base salary, or the average of the salary of all the lieutenants,’ Maas said.

Maas also said the county is not required to follow the recommendations. “I don’t want anyone to think we have to do this.”

Robinson said that legal opinions differ on that matter.

Iowa Code 331.907 says the Board of Supervisors “shall review the recommended compensation schedule for the elected county officers and determine the final compensation schedule.”

According to Maas, comp board members accused the county of “kicking the can down the road,” falling further behind in salary.

“I don’t buy into this notion of keeping up with the Joneses,” said Maas. If Polk County increases wages, the county next to it does the same. “We’re always going to be behind if you’re going to look at it that way,” Mass said.

A lot of other things are involved in setting salaries, she said.

“I did run the numbers, and it is a lot of money,” said Maas. The comp board recommendations add $417,836 to the budget which would require a 4% increase in property tax revenue, she said.

Iowa County Supervisors like to give non-elected, non-union employees the same raise it gives elected officials. That would increase the budget by another $1.09 million, which is an additional 10% increase, Maas said.

“We’re already behind,” said Maas. “I don’t know how we’re going to come up with the money to even float without raises.”

After Robinson left the meeting, Supervisor Kevin Heitshusen said he’d done his own research. He averaged the salaries of officials in the three next largest counties by population and in the three next smaller counties.

If supervisors used those numbers, supervisors would receive a 1% raise to $39,406.

The auditor’s salary would go up 4.9% to $79,071, the recorder’s, 3.4% to $77,977, and the treasurer’s, 4.2% to $78,501.

Maas said to get a more accurate figure for the sheriff’s salary supervisors should subtract the populations of towns in the county that have their own police departments because the sheriff’s department doesn’t have to administer law enforcement for those areas.

Averaging salaries in population areas of that number, about 10,000, would give the sheriff a raise of about 6.7% to $134,194, she said.

Degen reiterated that benefits, such as insurance, have to figure into the equation. “I know we’re just looking at salaries, but it all comes down to what we can do here.”

Maas said the comp board came up with the 13.365% increase by recommending a 7.365% raise to make salaries comparable to pay in other offices in the state and added an additional 5% to keep the county from falling behind next year.

“I’d rather chase them than to be ahead,” said Heitshusen.

“There’s just no way that we’re going to be able to afford this,” said Maas.

“Even if we could, I don’t know that we should, just based on like-size counties,” said Heitshusen.