Who Decides on Elected Officials' Salary Complaints

How your tax dollars are applied to elected officials’ salaries was decided in commissioner’s court Tuesday, when the court began a discussion on who would sit on the county’s elected official salary grievance committee.

The committee, whose composition was up for debate, is tasked with hearing all petitions for pay hikes from elected officials in the county, and has the sole authority to dole out the cash or to flat out deny it when a grievance is filed.

County Judge Steve Floyd explained the options for the committee in open court, defining option A as a nine-member board comprised of community members drawn from the grand jury list and option B as a constellation of county officials that include the sheriff, county tax assessor-collector, county treasurer and county clerk, among others.

“The only thing about the first option is that you’ve got a whole bulk of elected officials that are serving on the committee…” Floyd said. “…for a number of years we’ve been going with the nine public members…and I think there’s been several grievances filed and I think it’s gone both ways and in the middle in the course of all that.”

The salaries afforded elected officials becomes a hot-button political issue each year, Floyd noted, and grew of particular interest last year when the county treasurer and the district clerk were granted considerable raises.

“It seems like the public’s focus is not to our general staff, the other 465 people that work for the county,” Floyd said. “They don’t seem to be near as concerned about that as what you set those elected officials at, so it is difficult to deal with.” 

Having lain out the options available, Floyd invited comments and conversation on the topic from commissioners and county officials, which was largely in favor of maintaining the publicly-seated committee the county has held for years.

Elections Administrator Vona Hudson addressed the court, stating that she had served on a grievance committee as a citizen and had found that option rather successful in the past, but had noticed changes last year.

“The only difference I saw in this last grievance committee and the one that I served on was we had a clear understanding of what we could and could not do in the way of accepting comments from the public and asking questions,” Hudson said. “This last committee didn’t seem to understand that they could do that and I don’t know what the difference was in our explanation.”

Judge Floyd took some of the credit for Hudson’s observation, stating that being that it was his first year as a judge he didn’t want to overstep his bounds.

“I was pretty limited in my guidance,” he said. “I was probably reluctant to give a lot of guidance because I did not want to be in a position to be thought of unduly influencing the decision in either way.”

Floyd said he will likely provide more instruction in the future and is in favor of maintaining the committee filled by nine public persons.

Following a motion and a second, the court unanimously agreed to maintain the process of selecting public persons from the grand jury list for 2015.

“This court is consistent with what I think, which I would rather the general public, who are paying the taxes, come in and evaluate that (raises) and set their salaries,” Floyd said.