Too Much? Too Little? Committee Proposes Pay Package For Contra Costa Supes

A committee tasked with determining the appropriate salary and benefits package for Contra Costa County supervisors voted unanimously Thursday to recommend a 12 percent pay increase spread out over three years.

The Board of Supervisors will vote on July 7 on whether or not to accept the ad hoc committee’s recommendations, which also include tying any reductions in pay for public employee unions to reductions in their own salaries.

The 12 percent pay increase would be in addition to the 7 percent raise that the board already approved in March. Board members currently receive a base salary of $104,307. With the 12 percent raise, their base salary would be $116,840. Supervisors initially voted in November to give themselves a 33 percent raise, which would have increased their salary from $97,483 to $129,227 per year, but later repealed the decision after public employee unions launched a referendum petition to reverse the vote.

• Previous: Contra Costa County Supes Repeal Salary Increase, Keep Issue Off Ballot

The committee took a three-pronged approach to determine how to adjust the supervisors’ salaries, first identifying total compensation, selecting peer counties, and adjusting for the cost of living, committee facilitator and former county clerk-recorder Steve Weir said.

“It’s kind of like the Rosetta Stone,” Weir said. “When you can find peer counties, when you can find comparable total salaries and adjust for cost of living, they had it.”

The committee determined comparable counties by looking at the total county population, the county’s unincorporated population, and its total budget, according to meeting documents. Once they did that, Weir said it was clear that compared to peer counties, the supervisors’ salaries were on the low end. But, when they added in benefits, Weir said it accounted for roughly 50 percent of supervisors’ total compensation.

“If you looked at just base salary in the Bay Area, they were far behind,” Weir said. “But, they’ve got a little better benefits.”

Adding in a metric to equalize differences in cost of living, Weir said they were able to establish a rubric for evaluating compensation between counties. Based on comparable counties, they recommended bringing the supervisors’ salaries in line with the 37.5 percentile of supervisors’ salaries in peer counties. Ultimately, committee co-chair Margaret Eychner of the Contra Costa County Taxpayers’ Association, said the board should bring supervisors’ total compensation to the 50 percentile, or median, of peer counties, if they can also bring public employee union pay to the same level.

The committee recommends evaluating supervisors’ salaries every three years and suggested that the board should establish an employment compensation committee to review not only supervisors’ salaries, but all county elected officials. Once the board receives the recommendations from the committee on July 7, it will likely instruct county staff to draft an ordinance and the board will then have to vote to adopt the ordinance.

By Bay City News