Throw that benchmark on the fire

Come March, Spokane County’s three commissioners can start drawing almost $1,000 in additional pay each month. Members of the Citizens Salary Review Committee, meeting earlier this month, determined that Phil Harris, Todd Mielke and Mark Richard have been substantially underpaid in comparison with their peers in other counties.

That may be true, but what about the rest of us? Our peers in Benton, Clark, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties do substantially better. Of the six counties the Salary Committee used for comparison purposes, only Yakima County has a lower median household income than Spokane’s.

Households. That’s us. The median household is the one in the middle; half earn more, half earn less.

In 2003, the most recent year for which the U.S. Census Bureau has figures, the median household in Spokane County made do on $39,800. Yakima County households were getting by on $34,732. For the other five counties, the numbers look like this: Benton, $51,694; Clark, $50,258; Kitsap, $51,042; Pierce, $48,143; and Snohomish, $52,854. The average for Washington was $48,185.

Old news maybe, but still pertinent.

Harris, Mielke and Richard now earn $82,000 annually, thanks to a 9.3 percent, $7,000 bump implemented March 1. Mielke and Richards had served three months when their pay envelopes suddenly fattened. They nobly accepted.

With the increases that will go into effect in March, the annual sum goes to $93,000.

How does that compare with what the commissioners in the benchmark counties earn?

Well, pure apple-to-apple comparisons are somewhat difficult. Pierce and Snohomish counties have a county executive, plus five and seven commissioners, respectively. Pierce County commissioners earn $76,773, Snohomish County’s $97,532. The other four counties, like Spokane, have three commissioners, earning from $67,692 (Yakima County) to $99,528 (Kitsap). The average for the six counties is $86,175.

And probably no two counties impose the same workloads on their commissioners. In Spokane County, they act as legislators and executives. They administer a general fund of $133.7 million, and an overall budget for 2006 of $277.8 million. One member or another serves on any of 28 different boards.

All those factors, plus the number of people who report to the commissioners, strongly suggested a much higher level of compensation was in order, says Salary Committee member Dawnell Ellenson, a compensation expert at Avista Corp. for 15 years.

“We just had this huge gap. That’s all we were trying to do is close this gap,” she says. Committee members considered phasing in the increase, but decided to get it done in a single step so there will be no need for more catch-up adjustments in the future.

Mark Dressor, a BNSF Railroad engineer, says the committee’s 10 members — eight of them new — tried to be conservative. Members were largely unaware of what the commissioners had been making. Deliberations started with a quick briefing on their responsibilities, and a package with information about the other counties. Members asked for, and got, additional information, including an organizational chart and another showing the pay awarded other county officials.

“I thought we had good information,” Dressor says.

But not all the information, and nothing about the incomes of Spokane County households. That’s not right. The commissioners should not be benchmarked against just their peers in other counties, but against what their fellow county residents earn, as well. Not to mention the rank-and-file employees of the county itself, who can expect about a 2 percent cost of living increase next year.

Recall, too, that this is a government eating its financial reserves.

There’s also a disconnect between calls from the public sector that salaries should be benchmarked against those in comparable Washington counties, while we hear from private employers they cannot afford to pay too much more than their competitors over in Idaho, let alone those in Mexico or China.

And that median household income referenced earlier for Spokane County? Well, according to the Washington Office of Financial Management, that income fell slightly between 2000 and 2003, although increases were projected for 2004 and 2005. If incomes for 2005 do indeed reach the projected $41,244, that will represent just a 3.3 percent increase over the last five years.

The Spokane area has improved substantially over that period, but in just the last few days The Spokesman-Review has reported on the dire effect higher rents and energy bills are having on many households.

Maybe we should throw those benchmarks on the fire.