Treasurer's, District Clerk's Salaries Restored After Initial Cuts

Two weeks after their pay was docked, the salaries of County Treasurer Dianna Spieker and District Clerk Sheri Woodfin have been restored to last year’s amount of $75,000. The final decision was made by the commissioners’ court Tuesday after the commissioners lowered the two women's pay by $5,000, tp $70,000 each, on July 21.

According to County Judge Steve Floyd, the court’s decision was made because of the extra duties that the two elected officials perform duties that are beyond the requirements of their offices.

“These are functions that are optional for them,” Floyd said. “But if they chose not to [preform those duties], then we would have to go hire personnel to manage those functions. So it’s actually a benefit to the taxpayer.”

Spieker was initially caught off guard by the court’s choice to lower her salary.

“I was surprised at the first hearing of the elected officials’ salaries because I had not been briefed that this might happen,” Spieker said. “So during the commissioners’ court meeting was the first I had heard that that was under consideration.”

Spieker said that the county did not intend to reduce her salary up to that $5,000 amount, but that the court simply had not taken into account the additional responsibilities she performs. Aside from serving the county as treasurer, Spieker is also the director of indigent health care and runs the county and justice court compliance division.

Therefore, after the preliminary decision was made, Spieker made an inquiry to the court. She asked the commissioners to take the extra duties that she performs into consideration.

“After they self-reviewed the numbers, then they realized that ‘hey, wait a second, we did set her salary as treasurer, but had neglected to set her salary for those additional duties,’ which is what they ended up doing at Tuesday’s meeting,” Spieker said.

The decision concerning the treasurer’s and county clerk’s salaries is a part of the county’s discussion of salaries for elected officials in fiscal year 2016. Floyd said that the only changes from their preliminary ideas for the salary scales two weeks ago are that these two offices have had their pay raised. The issue was brought up again this Tuesday so the commissioners could approve the elected officials’ final pay. Click here to view the final pay for each elected official.

“Coming to county government, there’s a lot of pressure to do what I call socialism,” Floyd said. “Everybody gets the same, period. That kind of goes a little against my grain, but with county governments you are somewhat constrained by statutes and realities, so we’re constantly struggling, trying to find an equity and a balance between our employees because they are the most important thing that we have.”

Floyd stressed how much good leadership the county has and how important leadership is to the county’s operations. He emphasized how much work these leaders do in order to address the county’s increasing workload.

“You’ll notice how few positions we’ve added in this county the last two years, even though peoples’ workload is growing,” Floyd said. “There’s more and more legislation, more and more complexity to what we do. The number of personnel has grown very, very, very, slowly, and that’s because of these elected officials doing this sort of thing to help absorb that load. If the taxpayers would sit down and analyze all of that, I think they would probably understand. They are receiving a bargain for those services.”

Floyd said that in many counties, the county judge lays out the budget without any input from the elected officials or the department heads.

“If it works for them, fine, but from here the only way I’ve seen it done is the department heads take the time and actively participate,” Floyd said. “Well, anytime we do that, obviously there’s going to be a lot of environment in the room for discussion and comment. But it’s done in the public arena. I think transparency helps a great deal and by the time we get to the end, people are reasonably satisfied.”

In the end, Spieker was pleased with the commissioners’ final decision.

“I look forward to continued open communication for the benefit of the constituents of Tom Green County,” Spieker said.