Travis County Commissioners Court

June 26, 2012 - Item 14
Agenda

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14, consider and take appropriate action regarding the fiscal year 2013 base compensation for elected officials.
A, approve the proposed calendar for setting elected officials' salaries; b, increase the base compensation rate for elected officials who are not subject to a state mandated salary cap of 5.5%, and approve the public advertisement for elected officials base compensation rate.

>> Let me start this off.
Included in your agenda materials, and I'll walk you through the calendar and then diane and todd will share the research they've done related to this item.
So in your agenda materials there's a proposed salary setting calendar for elected officials for the upcoming year 2013.
The budget office has put this together quite nicely.
They've really highlighted the key, some of the key dates in bold here.
And the first one after hearing about the item today, we would propose that you actually act on the proposed calendar for setting the salaries, and then we can certainly come forward at your future meetings to have more discussion and move forward there and have you approve the ad for the public hearing.
You can see on July the 10th, this is when we would actually ask you to give us the authority to go forward and advertise as part of the process what the proposed salary would be.
Then on July 19th, that's when we would contemplate that the ad would run and we typically run that in the Austin correct me if I am the Austin chronicle.
July 31st would be the scheduled public hearing that we hold any time that we revise these salaries on proposed salaries for the elected officials, and that is when we would propose that you would actually set those salaries.
Then during August the -- there's a grievance process associated with that and if you have any questions about how that works in more detail, I think diane can probably answer those questions after she moves through the process that she and todd undertook.
But in any event, that would occur during the month of August and it would all culminate in our budget adoption on September 25th.

>> Did I hear you say you wanted us to approve the calendar today?

>> Yes, would you please.

>> Any questions or comments?

>> Move approval of the calendar proposed.

>> Second.

>> Discussion on the motion?
All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.

>> And then I'm going to turn over to diane for the work they did and I believe we provided you some additional backup information that already talk briefly about as well.

>> I'm going to let todd discuss his methodology for getting the information that we presented in the backup.

>> Well, as you recall when we did the market study for the classified employees, we did do a market salary survey of all positions and the average increase that resulted from that project was approximately 3.5% t so one of the things that we wanted to do was we wanted to somewhat remain consistent with the manner in which we had conducted that market study and so we decided to do a snapshot survey of elected official salaries in what we considered to be the peer counties for Travis County and those are bexar county, tarrant, dallas, harris and also Williamson county.
We sent a -- basically a very short survey to the counties involved and we asked for a direct salary to be provided to us and then we took that data, we averaged it out per job and then compared that to the Travis County current salary to come up with a percentage difference.
There's some considerably below market but we'll hold off discussing the results for now.

>> And you can see on page 2 of the memo that was associated with the backup, we do have the percentage difference for each one of the elected officials' positions.
Again, this is a salary by salary comparison.
I did send you additional backup last night.
If you did not receive a copy, I have it here.
Do you mind, todd?
And I also sent to it julian.
The county attorney expressed concern involving one of the data points and he was correct.
Dallas county was mistaken, they don't have a county attorney so shame on him.
That did change the market data.
He was showing over 6% a head.
He is only about 3% a head and that is only with two data points.
So in anticipation of being asked about what el paso is doing, we went ahead and got el paso, judge, and el paso is making 168,300, the county attorney there.
That shows him about a percent below the market.
We didn't feel like two data points were enough for comparison.
I feel we need to emphasize again this is a salary comparison, it is not a mid point to mid point.
These positions don't have ranges, they simply have salaries.
It's trickier than a regular salary survey because at that point you are looking at the average of the mid point of the grade that any particular job is in.
This can really vary based on the individual offices.
For example, our county attorney is a good example.
He does civil and criminal where some of his counterparts do not.
There's important to note there's some differences within the offices.
I just want you to take that under advisement.
I think it needs to be said.
Constable 5 needs to be ahead of market but that appears to be he does some duties the rest of the constables don't do and that was recognized in his salary in a previous action from the Commissioners court.
So we look more at trend data than we do at individual salary data and I think that's really important that we're looking at the overall trend.
That is why we are recommending a 3.5% increase.
There are -- the major outliers as far as I can see for me is the justice of the peace.
They were tied long ago to this is again back to the same decision that tied the associate magistrate judges to 75%.
The justice of the peace, they were all also tied in the same action.
So they have been at 75% of the district court judges' salaries since 2007.
They also have not received an increase since.
When there was cost of living increases that went for the rest of the elected officials, the justice of the peace did not receive those.
We are making a move to include them with elected officials and not with the associated magistrate judges.
And we are asking them to be considered as elected -- excuse me, as elected officials.
Just some clarification on that why they are over market.
That was a previous decision that tied them to the district court judges.

>> And we are sharing some additional information with the district attorney's office.
When you look at that category as well, that position looks like it's significantly under so we are getting feedback from them.

>> That would be great because as I looked at the county and district attorney offices, and this is just a peculiar active of my office, varied widely in their scope of authority county to county.
So for next year it would be good to revisit both of those since-i mean harris county, for instance, I believe only does civil in the county attorney's office because their district attorney's office --

>> Takes care of the criminal.

>> Their district attorney has a much broader range of authorities than ours.

>> And significant also, this is just a county portion of the district attorney office too so it's only -- the 65% difference is in the county portion.
It does not include the state portion so it would not be a tie if you are including the state portion.

>> Another element I would like to know for the future although I'm good with the proposal, but for the next time with regard to the j.p.s, it would also -- it would be valuable to me to know the -- I know this is a contentious issue for some, but we -- we attract lawyers to our j.p.s and not every county does that and that probably has to do with salary levels since the position of j.p.
Doesn't require a law degree.
But bless he hadly we have a very high percentage of canned who go out for these positions who have law degrees.
Which is helpful in a lot of ways.
Not necessary, but very helpful.

>> We have it in place in 1974.
Then when we got the last j.p.
Elected from precinct 4

>> [inaudible].

>> So you hope to get action on b and c next week?

>> Well, we'll be back in July based on the calendar.
And I wanted to also note that in the backup materials is a copy of the draft ad.

>> Okay.
Thank you very much.

>> Thank you.
So not necessary week but the week of a?

>> July 10th.

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