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The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors approved a 7% raise for themselves Tuesday morning, much smaller than the 33% raise they approved late last year but then repealed after a public outcry.
The board is continuing to look at ways to take its own salary adjustments out of its hands. The ordinance passed last year would have pegged their salary to 70% of state judges’ salaries.
Now the board is considering tying its salaries to only 56.5% of judges’ salaries, but did not take that step Tuesday.
Tying county supervisors’ salaries to state judges’ salaries is something practiced widely around the state in order for supervisors to avoid the potentially awkward situation of voting on their own raises.
The range of salaries can vary widely from county to county, however, from supervisors in Napa County earning 49% of state judges’ salaries to supervisors in Los Angeles County earning 100%, according to Contra Costa County board chairman John Gioia.
A new committee to study the best ways to move forward with the supervisors’ salaries was also created Tuesday and is expected to report to the board on its findings in July. The board’s 7% raise will take effect June 1.
The board had argued that the hefty 33% salary increase was necessary because the supervisors hadn’t gotten a raise since 2006. Supervisor Mary Piepho said at a January meeting that if the supervisors had gotten a 4% pay increase every year, it would have amounted to roughly the same raise.
But opponents of the salary increase, led by public employee unions, gathered 39,222 signatures for a ballot initiative to overturn the raise, arguing that county employees had been asked to make sacrifices in times of financial hardship for the county.
The county had only been offering public employees raises of 2 or 3% in the midst of contract negotiations last year.
The board, rather than go through a costly fight for the raise at the ballot box, opted to repeal it instead and examine other options.
Supervisor Candace Andersen, whose district includes the San Ramon Valley, praised the creation of the committee Tuesday as a way to give closure to the contentious issue. She said the committee has the ability to examine their salaries overall and even has the ability to lower it if it sees fit.
“It really is a fresh look at compensation,” Andersen said. “It’s preferably out of our hands moving forward.”
The committee will consist of five members, one each chosen by the county Civil Grand Jury, the county Taxpayers Association, the East Bay Leadership Council, the county Central Labor Council and the county Human Service Alliance.
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An important and neglected fact in this story is whether the CoCo Supervisors work a full time equivalent 40 hours per week at their job, 50 weeks per year. Or is this position more like 10 hours per week, 20 weeks a year? In which case, pegging their salary at the median income for the county might be more appropriate than full time pay for part time work.
Sure would be nice to have such context in the reporting.
They work 60 – 80 hours per week for about 350 days per year. They are out on nights and weekends and meet with groups all week long year around.
Seems like the Supervisors are very concerned with their own salaries and raises. What about the people’s business? Perhaps we ought to consider recalling each and everyone of them. This way, they wouldn’t have to worry about voting themselves raises and would have to find real jobs like the rest of us.
Seems to me that even 7% is still a very high increase amount. Most people at companies these days get a 2-3% increase, if they are lucky, and are told they are a top performer and lucky to get a 3% increase. If the title of this article said they gave themselves a 2.5% raise I’d ignore it and go on thinking that is a normal cost-of-living adjustment, but 7% is just asking for more public questioning about why they deserve it.
Seems fair. I do not have a problem with 7%.