Travis County Commissioners Court
July 19, 2005
Item 6
Now let's go to an easy one, number six, consider and take appropriate action on, a, report of citizens advisory committee on elected officials' salaries and six-b, content of and schedule for publishing advertisement regarding Travis County elected officials sue salaries for fiscal year 2006. I i see a whole lot of our committee members here.
>> we really appreciate your committee's work.
>> i'd like to begin by thanking deanna ramirez and all the other people, and my memory for names is totally going after 3,000 students or so careerwise. All the other people from the Travis County office of planning and budget who made this commission -- this committee's work possible. I certainly cannot have done the statistical analysis without the -- without their help in collecting and gathering data. I know you have a copy the report in front of you. I don't have it here. I'll have to borrow a copy if you need to see the numbers. We basically have recommended that the district clerk be given salary parity with the county clerk and county tax assessor collector. We fill those three offices. The duties and the weight of responsibility are sufficient to justify parity on salary. I'd like to address the constable salaries a little bit. We did a lot of soul searching on that. And historically a lot of counties have tied constable salaries to justice of the peace because the constable does work under the justice of the peace. However, the committee's approach has been to look at the professional qualifications that statutes require to hold the position. In that situation a constable is by Texas statute required to hold the same peace officer qualifications as a police officer or a county sheriff. Now, the main duty that the county sheriff has, the main issue we saw that the county sheriff runs that the constables do not is corrections. But otherwise constables or their deputies can be called on to assist any law enforcement agency in any emergency and have been in the past and will be again in the future. So we felt like that it would be better to tie that salary as a percentage of sheriff rather than has a percentage of the justice of the peace. As has been the practice in a number of other counties. And like I say, we -- if I may use the term we sweated bullets and blood over this decision before we came to it, and there was a lot of discussion. So we're recommending that constable salaries be set at 80% of the sheriff's salary. The constable's do all of the civil service in Travis County, including some civil service that can get very snaky very quickly, like evictions and taking children away. Those situations can turn violent in a heartbeat, and I think we all realize that. And the constable has the responsibility over all of the deputies who are out serving that sort of paper in those emotionally charged situations. Obviously the commission can either take our recommendations, modify them, do whatever you want to with them, but these are our recommendations, and I think our rationale for those recommendations. I'd ask does anyone here have anything you would like to add to that statement?
>> what I would add is when we got through with the evaluations, it turned out that doing the salary's at 80% of the sheriff's salaries put their salar's at 90% of the justice of the peace salaries, which is what we found when we surveyed constable positions throughout Texas. So coincidentally it worked out the same as where we had started, but we had a better rationale in our ploach to the administrative duties. Part of the bullet that we were sweating -- -- there's some dissension on the escalating salaries and the cost of government incumbent with that. What I am asking you to consider, and I think what we considered as a panel was the fact that with excellent salaries we can expect some excellent results from these elected officials. Their salaries in and of themselves are a small fraction of the cost of government. What's the cost of government gets fueled by wait these elected officials administer their department, the way they hire, the way they fire, wait they manage their budgets, their workforce and so forth. That's where the real costs of government lie and where the true cost savings in government can lie in a well administered department. So the elected official and their salary is there. It reflects what they are responsible for in the administration of that department. If they do their job well, the savings will result in the way those departments are administered and it's savings that the entire county enjoys in the way those budgets are being managed.
>> my name is maxine barkin. I know most of you. Thank you very much for having us here and giving us this responsibility. I just want to say we had a little problem with aligning the constables who are elected with peace officers in the sheriff's department who are not elected. So you couldn't compare those two. It would be not comparable at all. So we had a lot of difficulty in trying to determine who would be the one that would be -- that we would pair this position against, an elected official rather than, say, civil service or a higher person. That took us awhile to work through. And also I think echoing greg, we felt that we needed to have parity in our elected officials' salary because we want to attract the best and the brightest to those positions because they're the ones that we rely on for good government.
>> if I can add something here, one of the things we noted was the elected constables currently could resign their offices and go to work as a civil service major or captain on any -- on one or more law enforcement agencies in the area, have less work, have less responsibility and earn a larger salary than they currently earn. And I’m not sure that situation, echoing greg's comments, is the way to attract the best and the brightest to the elected officials' positions.
>> do you think that these people knew what the job paid when they ran for the office?
>> yeah. That issue did come up. They knew about it. And, you know, the commission -- the Commissioners court here can vote to, you know, throw this recommendation away and give them five percent. That's your prerogative. You commissioned us to come up here and make a recommendation base, and we've given you the recommendation, we've given you the rationale behind that. And usually i'll let out one of my deep dark secrets, I’m a fairly conservative republican, so usually I do not vote -- I usually am the guy holding the trenches saying let's keep the salaries low. But in this case, like I say, the fact that recent changes in state law now require that the constable undergo the same training and have the same professional qualifications as a county sheriff weighed pretty heavily with me in my mind in that area.
>> walter timberlake. We served quite a few hours on that committee and we had a lot of discussion as we said here and we went over a lot of issues. When it come down to vote, though, all of us were in the majority of the way this report came out, so that's what we recommend to you. And elected officials, mr. Daugherty, all of them, everybody has a salary when they run for it, but all through the times of their terms, they may come up for a wage increase, a living wage increase or some kind of increase all the way down. So I’m sure that they all run for an office knowing what it is, but still after you get in and go, maybe the public decides that they need a little more money.
>> I might agree with you, walter, but there's nobody that runs for office and says, do you know what, put me in there and I’m going to hope thaw give me a 23% pay increase. I've never seen anybody run for office and say that. You know -- and you probably wouldn't vote for somebody that would say that. I mean, here's the thing that's offensive to me, y'all. These are obscene increases in pay. I’m trying to figure out how to pay a guy that goes out and works in 114 degrees that makes $10.14 an hour and is not even a third within the poferlt level. I don't know how anybody can tell us this. I realize that y'all are just giving us the numbers based on some sort of a multiplier that you used, but it is very difficult to sit up here and to give somebody 23%, 13% pay raises. I just -- I don't know how you can look us in the eye and tell us this is what we ought to do.
>> here's how i'll look you in the eye, Commissioner Daugherty. I understand what you're saying, and it's difficult for me whose members are making the 10 and 10.50 an hour that you're alluding to. I’m not going to be a hip credit in my approach to anybody's salary. When we come forward to Commissioners court and ask that market studies be done for employees and classification scudz be done on employees, we ask you to follow some sort of a science that says here's a representative market, here's the salary that we need to pay, whether it's an operator, a maintenance tech or a lawyer or whatever, we use the market to dictate it. What we used in this equation is what we've used throughout the years. We let those numbers fall where they may. It would be -- we would be manipulating the system if we looked at it politically and say, do you know what? This is a hard one and it is a hard one for me necessarily to stand up and say let's give 23% here, but we're only going to do two percent over here. That's extremely difficult for me to be able to advocate; however, I am going to let the numbers dictate the same way I’m expecting that the numbers, the market studies will dictate when we're setting the salaries for operators or maintenance techs or anybody else. That's what the numbers showed us, Commissioner, that this is -- this salary increase that was warranted. Now, we understand the politics that are going to play out in this and everything else, and that's why we're going to leave it to your judgment. We're telling you that's a recommendation based on our best counsel, our best approach looking fairly at how a market study is to be done. Not just for elected officials, but for everybody. And I would hope when I advocate this, and my members say how the hell can you do this and be promoting 20% increases for elected officials, I’m going to be looking them in the eye and saying, and when the market stutd is done and it dictates a 20% salary salary increases are warranted for you, I expect that you will receive them also. That's how I can look you in the eye and say we need to do this.
>> Gerald, the one other perspective that I would just add is that if the category of elected officials, if those folks individually and as a whole had been treated the same as rank and file and the pops categories, we would not be sitting there today with their needing to be some catchup work on certain categories. And you weren't here in '98, but that's when we did the big market salary survey and we actually had people in categories that we had to have special rules for people in one year, rank and file employees who got more than a 30% increase and market demanded it. I can guarantee you Travis County Commissioners court and the elected officials category never saw any of those numbers, and they were not treated the same way because you just couldn't do that. Unfortunately, sometimes elected officials, and I’m going to speak now about our district judges, the state of Texas made an affirmative choice to not deal with their salaries for seven years. And now they're having to play catchup. So those numbers are disconcerting. But again, I think that's why on a lot of these things it's two percent because we're saying these folks should be treated like rank and file. But we still had a few more folks that we needed to take care of. And last year if we had not taken care of the jp's, we would still have had an issue with the jp's that all of a sudden the constables need to be part of the sheriff, then all of a sudden they would be making more than the jp's.
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
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>> ...from the educational community, walter is one of our good citizens and we have got help from the democratic party, the republican party, mr. Logan signed off on this report, correct? So this is --
>> I don't think he did, did he?
>> did mr. Logan sign or not.
>> I don't think --
>> signed the report [indiscernible]
>> but I mean we -- we've asked other people to help us so that it is not us saying well oh, we give so and so a raise. No, we have asked for -- for non-partisan help and objective help and I’m -- I’m willing to accept it.
>> thank you.
>> maybe we need to -- when do we need to advertise elected officials salaries, we have a few weeks, don't we?
>> yes. If you would -- if you could take action next week, that's fine. But it is to set the content for the ad. Set the content for the ad, then you have to have the public hearing on the elected officials salaries, then you have to allow time for the grievance process. But I have scheduled about two or three weeks of -- of, you know, enough time at the very end in September.
>> but --
>> -- [speaker interrupted -- multiple voices]
>> move that we formally receive the report and formally express our great appreciation to the committee for assisting us.
>> second.
>> yes.
>> and -- if I may address Commissioner Sonleitner, the committee's approach has always been to look at the office and not the individual holding the office. And look at this -- in fact this year we've had both -- both our district city clerk and constables who asked to talk to the committee, they will tell you -- any of the people who were there that day when they started talking about what they had accomplished as an individual, they got cut off very quickly by yours truly and informed we don't -- we are not here to hear about your personal accomplishments, we are here to hear about the responsibilities that anyone sitting in your office is going to have and the constables got the same speech, so this has been the way that we have historically here for every time this committee has met has approached it in that way. Another thing, of course this is something that you can't do anything about, but we also, at least I did anyway, looked at -- these are skilled jobs. Actually, in my opinion, they really don't belong as an elected officials because they are skill related jobs. They don't -- in the business world, I’m sure, that they have comparable jobs, especially like the district clerk for instance. That -- that -- that requires a certain kind of skill that you usually find in -- in people who are -- who are hired for those jobs, not that they run for office for those jobs. So this -- as I say, we can't do anything about this, obviously, at this -- but I think that it's one of the ways that I looked at at the positions as a skill, that -- that that job required. And that -- I don't mean that -- well, it's a skill that -- and the qualifications that they have to go through to -- to apply for those jobs. So in addition to looking at the position, I also was thinking that this really is -- is a different perspective than -- than elected officials who make policy and act in that fashion.
>> I don't want you to think that i'm, you know, bothered by y'all's decision, I think that you all had a procedure that you went through and I -- and I respect that. And what we are talking about, solving the differences. You know what, I think if you -- if you had constable positions, if you had elected positions and nobody filed for them, I think that you might ought to start looking, is the way the thing? I don't think that I have ever seen an office yet that somebody didn't file and say I know what the job paid and I know what it -- I know what it was, I’m never going to get out there and campaign I want to get this, I want to get more money, it's just a hard sell for me. You know, that's something that you all will not be able to convince me otherwise. You have done the job that you were supposed to do, so I -- so I appreciate that.
>> i've never been able to convince you about capital metro.
>> maxine did you come over here to talk about capital metro? [laughter]
>> no, disrespect to anybody who has served as an elected official way, way back in the past, I really think that the quality of candidates has improved. With the salary improving, I’m thinking specifically on the judicial side because they could make so much more in a lucrative law practice. We are blessed that so many very highly qualified people have come forward and it has gotten better Gerald with the higher salary.
>> all in favor of the motion to receive and appreciate. [laughter]
>> who got you?
>> that passes by unanimous vote. We will have a broadly -- more broadly worded fee on the agenda next week to take action on that. Thank you all again. If this had been easy work we would have done it ourselves.
>> thank you.
>> thanks.
>> thank you. Good to see you all. Bye, maxine.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:18 AM