County positions, compensation prompt supervisor discussion

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

Clerks, deputies and others — how many of each employee category do Floyd County departments need, and how much should they be paid?

Those questions were at the heart of a lengthy discussion Monday at a county Board of Supervisors workshop meeting.

The supervisors have been giving consideration to the question since Oct. 15, when County Treasurer Frank Rottinghaus asked the board to approve creating a new motor vehicle specialist position in his office to replace a deputy who had retired.

He said a clerk had taken over the deputy’s duties, and he wanted to pay her appropriately.

Supervisor Chairwoman Linda Tjaden said at the time that she wanted to talk with the county’s human resources consultant before making a decision, because whatever action the board took could set a precedent for other offices.

She said Monday that she was ready to recommend that a new position of specialist be created — “not a deputy, but above a clerk, for people who have taken on extra duties and responsibilities above and beyond what a clerk is doing today.”

She said specialist would be an hourly position with supervisors setting the pay level, and suggested that pay be limited, for example to no more than 75 percent of the elected official’s salary in that department.

Both Supervisors Doug Kamm and Mark Kuhn expressed concerns that if they created the new position, every elected official would soon move to convert their clerks to specialists.

“What would be the cost effect if they all became specialists?” Kuhn asked. “Most certainly the board will get requests from every single office. What’s the budget effect?”

Most county elected officials manage offices that include clerk positions and deputy positions. A primary difference between the two is clerks are hourly positions, with their pay set by the supervisors, and deputies are salaried positions, with their pay a percentage of the department elected official’s salary.

Deputy positions are paid more than clerk positions, and generally have some management responsibilities within the office.

In 2013, in an effort to control personnel costs, the Board of Supervisors passed a policy allowing each department just one deputy. No one was fired or demoted, but as deputies left or retired they were replaced with lower-paid clerks.

(Note that an office deputy is not the same type of position as a sheriff’s deputy, who is actually a patrol officer. The supervisors’ one-deputy limit does not apply to the Sheriff’s Office.)

This summer, a long-time deputy retired in the Treasurer’s Office, and the supervisors approved hiring a clerk for the office.

In October, Rottinghaus requested that the board create a specialist position for the clerk who had assumed the duties of the retired deputy.

“We don’t want to see people with a lot of experience go out the door,” Rottinghaus said at the time.

At the time of that request, both County Auditor Gloria Carr and County Recorder Deb Roberts said that they, also, had clerks who were now doing the duties of deputies because over the years they had deputies leave who were replaced with clerks.

Both of them had said they would ask that their clerks be made specialists if that position became available.

Rottinghaus said Monday it wasn’t his intention “to open the floodgates,” but only to recognize someone in his office who had been a good employee, who had now taken on substantial new responsibilities and who should be rewarded for doing that.

But Carr said she felt the same way.

“In 99 counties I would bet that we are the one and only county that doesn’t have an elections deputy,” she said, as an example.

The discussion included if there would be limits on the number of specialists per office, if those positions could be created anytime or only at budget time, and how the supervisors would decide if a promotion to specialist was warranted.

Kuhn wondered if the board members had the expertise to decide if someone deserved to be made a specialist, and he suggested that a wage study might be beneficial to see how Floyd County wages and positions compare with other counties.

But Carr said that most other counties have more than one deputy in each office, so if you compare the wages of the Floyd County clerks who are doing a certain job they will be compared with deputies in other counties who are making more money and the results will show Floyd County employees are underpaid.

Later in the discussion, Kamm said, “I don’t truly believe that anybody is underpaid. If you want to do some research and go out and compare yourself to the private, we have the best health insurance in the whole wide world. This turned into a huge wage fight and it’s not going away until every single person in the courthouse gets a raise.”

Rottinghaus said, “That’s certainly a perception that I don’t share.”

Carr said, “I don’t share the same position, either.

“Granted, we have good health insurance,” she said, “but if we were to do a 10-county comparison (of the five counties with the next higher population and the five counties with the next lower population to Floyd County) my two people (her clerks) would be underpaid.”

Kamm said, “How come we never have any turnover? Very little, except retirement.”

Tjaden said Rottinghaus’ request had been on hold long enough, and the board would make a decision on it at the next regular meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 27.

She also said she would help prepare a resolution on a specialist position that the board could discuss at its next planning session, Monday, Nov. 26. The board could take action on that resolution on Tuesday.