Is any public sector pay raise justified in current economy?
Three weeks ago, Columbiana County commissioners agreed to a 3 percent pay raise this year for employees of the sheriff’s department — even though they, like other local government officials throughout Ohio, were anticipating a reduction in state funding.
Just how big a hit the county will suffer in the state’s two-year budget was revealed by Gov. John Kasich when he unveiled his spending plan on March 15. The Republican governor, who took office in January, proposed cutting the Local Government Fund by 25 percent a year. Kasich said the 50 percent reduction over two years would save the state $555 million.
That’s money out of the operating budgets of counties, cities, townships and villages.
If Kasich’s budget is adopted by the General Assembly — and there’s every reason to believe it will be given that the House and Senate are in Republican hands — Columbiana County’s general fund will lose $1.05 million over the state’s two fiscal years, beginning July 1.
Thus the question: Did commissioners Jim Hoppel, Penny Traina and Michael Halleck really think that granting 3 percent pay raises to 19 sheriff’s deputies, five dispatchers and four clerical workers was prudent governance?
Hoppel, president of the board of commissioners, went so far as to say that he was pleased with the attitude shown by the sheriff’s workers, and was pleased with the outcome of the contract reopener talks considering county government’s tight finances.
Are we missing something here?
To be sure, employees of the sheriff’s department agreed to a pay freeze last year, the first of the three-year contract, but there was a reopener clause for 2011.
The new contract talks resulted in the employees securing the pay raise for this year and agreeing to a freeze in 2012.
The price tag for the increase has been estimated at $42,000 a year.
What would have happened had the commissioners done what has been standard operating procedure in the private sector for several years and told the employees of the sheriff’s department they could not justify any pay raises in light of the reduction in state funding?
The deputies may have gone to arbitration, which would have forced the commissioners to hire a lawyer, but then again they may have been influenced by the growing anger of taxpayers toward the whole issue of public employee compensation.
On March 17, The Vindicator published a column by Daniel Akst of Newsday, who offered these facts about the private sector workplace: Only 45 percent of adults are covered by employer health care plans; workers are bearing more of the soaring cost of employer coverage — from 2000 to 2010, the employer share rose 114 percent, the worker share rose 147 percent; with regard to retirement, only 15 percent of workers have traditional “defined benefit” plans.
With public sector retirees guaranteed comparatively lucrative pensions and health insurance coverage, the decision to give any worker a pay raise in the midst of an economic recession is mind-boggling.
It doesn’t matter that the sheriff’s employees have agreed to pay 9 percent co-pay of the cost of their health insurance instead of 5 percent. That’s still a pittance compared with what those in the private sector are paying.
Commissioners Hoppel, Traina and Halleck would have been justified in singing the praises of sheriff’s department workers had they agreed to a pay freeze this year and a higher co-payment on their health insurance.
Praising them for seeking a 3 percent raise is ludicrous, to say the least.