Letter To The Editor: County Attorney Threatens to Sue Wright County for Pay Raise

I found it interesting that the highest paid Wright County employee, Attorney, Tom Kelly, threatened to sue Wright County, his employer,  if he did not receive the 3 percent pay increase that he requested for 2013 (See 12-11-12 WC Commissioner Board Meeting Minutes).  

Reasonable people can debate the appropriateness of a pay increase given the current economic time that we find ourselves in, and, by all accounts, Mr. Kelly has done a fine job as County Attorney for 29 years.  Additionally, Mr. Kelly does have the right to sue the county for his pay raise as per MN statue. However, none of these factors justifies the threatened use of litigation to force the taxpayers of Wright County to provide him with a 3 percent pay increase in 2013.

What's troubling about this, besides the rapacious nature of the threat, is the fact that Mr. Kelly has every legal right to sue the county to get what he wants. For some reason, this seems seriously out of touch with the way the rest of the world operates. In almost 30 years of working in the private sector as a full-time employee and also as an independent consultant, I have never heard of anyone, even in jest, consider the idea of suing their employer to obtain a pay raise. In the private sector, this idea is laughable. 

So why is it that this public servant has the ability to sue his employer, which at the end of the day is the taxpayer, to obtain a pay raise?  

I applaud those Wright County Commissioners who stood up to Mr. Kelly's heavy-handed “negotiation” technique. 

Tom McGregor
Maple Lake