Greene County elected officials will see their salaries increase more than the cost of living if the county supervisors accept the recommendation of the compensation board. The compensation board, which is composed of people appointed by the elected officials, is recommending salary increases from 8 to 15 percent. The federal cost of living adjustment is 5.9 percent.
The board met for longer than an hour Monday morning. Serving on the compensation board for fiscal year ’23 wages are Guy Richardson representing the auditor; Mary Jane Fields and Jim Unger representing the supervisors; Tom Heater representing the county attorney; Tim Heisterkamp representing the treasurer; and Adam Pedersen representing the recorder. Richardson was elected as chair.
Fields was not present at the meeting, but according to Richardson, she was “adamant” that the board hold salary increases to the cost of living.
All elected officials attended the meeting. They were invited to speak.
Sheriff Jack Williams spoke first. He referred to what “the law says is supposed to be mine,” meaning a dictate in Senate File 342, passed during the 2021 legislative session, that requires county compensation boards to set the sheriff’s salary so that it is comparable to salaries paid to command officers of the Iowa State Patrol and the DCI, and to city police chiefs employed by cities of similar population to the population of the county. SF342 is known as the “Back the Blue” law.
“I understand we can’t do that all in one year, so I’m not expecting the comp board to do like a lot of the other counties and suggest a 25 or 40 percent pay increase…. If we could get me even remotely close in the next couple of years, I was personally thinking 15 percent for myself and 15-20 percent for Thomas (Laehn, county attorney).”
Iowa State Patrol officers are paid $90-$100,000 a year. Williams said the goal of the Back the Blue law was to make sheriff’s offices more competitive with other law enforcement agencies in attracting employees. According to him, sheriff’s deputies are $10-$15,000 behind where they should be. (Note: Greene County deputies’ wages are negotiated in a union contract.)
John Muir, chair of the board of supervisors, was present and participated in the discussion. After Williams made his request, Muir said, “We all have to answer to the taxpayers. The morale is good. It’s a great team all the way across. But it comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets ultimately…. We invested in a new LEC…and at some point pretty quick here we’re going to ask to build a new jail. Jack’s numbers for raises are reasonable, but I want to interject nobody’s being mistreated and we’re trying to do as much as we can to keep good people in the positions. This is part of it, but look at the whole package.”
Richardson reminded the board that county employees have a health benefit that costs the county $35,000 per year and sometimes overtime. “Base salary doesn’t tell the whole story of what people are making,” he said.
Attorney Laehn said pegging the attorney’s salary at the median for other county attorneys isn’t correct because it includes fulltime and part-time attorneys. He said one-third of the county attorneys in Iowa are part-time. The median salary for all county attorney’s is $104,000. The average fulltime county attorney is making $116,000; the average part-time county attorney earns $73,000.
“I make a good salary for rural Iowa… I can’t complain about my salary. I think it’s probably in the realm of what I consider fair, at the far low end of what I consider fair,” Laehn said.
County treasurer Katlyn Mechaelsen asked for a salary increase “somewhere near the cost of living (increase). That’s all I’m asking.”
County recorder Deb McDonald also asked for a cost of living increase. “I don’t want to ask for something unreasonable. The people are paying our wages,” she said.
Richardson asked Muir again for comments. “Cost of living is a good place to start,” he said. “Last year we were holding the strings pretty tight and everybody worked with us on that. I was expecting we were going to need to step up. The supervisors I hope are doing our job…. We’re just supporting everybody else in how they do their jobs and they’ve made it pretty easy. They’re all doing their jobs excellently. We’re working with a great team. I wouldn’t trade any of them.”
Muir said the comp board discussion was “in the same ballpark” as what the supervisors were expecting, and that the county can afford pay raises at this time.
Auditor Jane Heun spoke last of the elected officials. She said her office had been “slammed” with more things to do, particularly in more election oversight, tax increment financing, and debt service. “I think that position deserves more than a cost of living increase. I’d say more like 10 percent,” she said.
After much discussion, the compensation board approved a motion that the sheriff and attorney receive 15 percent salary increases, the auditor and treasurer receive 10 percent increases, and the recorder and supervisors receive an 8 percent increase.
Supervisors Dawn Rudolph and Pete Bardole were also at the meeting. Both of them, along with Muir, said they would support the proposal. Per the Code, the supervisors can change salary increases from what the compensation board recommends, but it must be by the same percentage. They can consider their own salary separately from other elected officials’ salaries.
If the supervisors implement salary increases as the compensation board recommends, salaries would be as follows: attorney from $107,043 to $123,100; sheriff from $84,406 to $97,066; auditor from $66,492 to $73,141; treasurer from $64,274 to $70,702; recorder from $64,402 to $69,555; and supervisors, from $30,408 each to $32,841.
For the current year all elected officials except the sheriff received a 2.5 percent salary increase. The sheriff received a 4.16 percent increase. The compensation board had recommended increases of 3 percent for most and 5 percent for the sheriff.
