Let's talk about raises.
Facts first: there are, essentially,
two types of County employees. There are union employees, members of
one of the three units operating in the County (Correction Officers,
Sheriff's Deputies, and CSEA (everyone else). All the rest of the
County employees (including Reps and other Electeds) are Management
and Confidential, universally known as M&C.
Union employee's salaries are laid out
in the contract, which includes specific percentage raises that will
be applied in each year of the contract. So Union folks always know
what their salary will be, practically to the penny, for the next few
years that the contract covers.
Here's how M&C salaries are
determined: At the January Board meeting, there is a resolution
which lists each position and the salary attached to that position
for the coming year. That's it.
How is that list assembled? Usually at
the Budget Committee, at some point. And if you think that this is a
system that's ripe for abuse, you'd be right.
The assumption has always been that the
M&C salaries will start the budget process for the next year
unchanged from the previous year, and if there's any money available
at the end, they might get a raise. There's never any money left at
the end. Before 2019, M&C employees went 11 years with only one
raise (and not all of them got it).
This is an issue that I have been
pursuing for about four or five years, and I think we're approaching
the finish line. Just one more major issue to address: an ongoing
salary scale that is automatically applied each year.
A few years ago, we got $50,000 added
to the budget for a comprehensive salary study, comparing our
salaries to salaries in comparable counties in NYS. Due to some
really frustrating complications and, frankly, the fact that no
competent organizations responded to our Request for Proposals, it
was a year later when we just decided to do the study ourselves. I
had already compared upstate counties on a large number of factors,
and we chose 18 of them to study. Penney Gentile and her Personnel
staff sent out detailed salary surveys to those counties, and
followed up, and followed up, and followed up. They were great, and
we got what I think is some really reliable data.
What we found was that Otsego County
was dead last, salarywise, for most M&C positions studied.
Overall, the picture was atrocious. We had kind of known this; in
casual conversation, Department Heads – who spend a lot of time
collaborating with their peers across the state – let us know that
our county was a well-known outlier in terms of salary.
To make a long and complicated story
short, the Budget Committee did an astounding thing last fall –
they proposed pay raises for all M&C employees that would put
their salaries right at the average paid across the comparable
counties. This was way better than I expected, and right now, our
M&C employees are just a bit below average (the study was done in
2018, with salary data up through 2017, so our folks are actually
getting the 2017 average; everyone in the other counties have gotten
two raises since then).
So the final hurdle: how do we set up
a scale that provides reasonable raises to M&C every year? The
PRGS Committee debated this for a year – 2018.
The Performance Review and Goal Setting
Committee (PRGS), of which I've been Chair for a few years, and a
member of for all my 8 years, works in two year cycles. In the
second year of the Reps term (after new Reps have had a year to learn
the ropes and get to know everyone involved) we facilitate
Performance Evaluations for all Department Heads. That's what we're
doing right now. During the first year of a term (for instance, 2018
and 2020), we discuss issues related to staffing, evaluation,
compensation, and anything else that seems relevant. For a number of
cycles we created and refined the Department Head evaluation forms
and the system for evaluation, which was much more complex (and long)
than one might think. In 2018 we attacked the M&C salary issue,
worked with Penney to do the salary study, and came to some general
conclusions regarding M&C salary scale and merit pay issues.
So we're ready to ask the Budget
Committee to consider all this – I've got to write it up and send
it out soon. Here's the proposal – not a hill to die on, but the
beginning of a conversation:
Department Heads
- 1.5% raise annually
- Another 1.5%, in increments of 0.5%, depending on outcome of latest Performance Evaluations
Non- Department Heads
- Same increment as CSEA contract
An important reason why this is
essential to do is that, in the last few years, there have been union
employees whose salary has risen above that of their supervisor.
This is a demoralizing situation, for sure, for the M&C
supervisor, but in addition, when the supervisor leaves, what
motivation does the union employee have to apply for the supervisor's
position? In addition, we found that we were hiring and training
employees only to see them take a job in a different (often nearby)
county for significantly more money.
So that's it. I've simplified some and
left a lot out, but this should be enough to understand why you might hear that the County is talking about raises for County employees.
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