COMMISSIONERS NEED CALCULATORS AND BACKBONES

If a story Thursday about Hamilton County commissioners giving their chairman and vice chairman what seemed like a raise — and at the same time handing out more than $10,000 in back pay to ex-commission leaders — left you scratching your head, don’t feel alone.

Maybe our sleepy commissioners just need personal calculators — or to learn to use the ones on their cellphones that they use during almost every meeting to text or call each other on the dais so we won’t hear their dialogue.

But more likely they were more concerned with appearing to be money savers by reducing the originally proposed raises in hopes that taxpayers would ignore the fact that they seem to be intent on giving themselves raises a few seats at a time — all in the name of “housekeeping” resolutions to “clarify the compensation” policy. Who do we think they think they are kidding? Our commission began playing with pay raises again last week when County Attorney Rheubin Taylor brought them a measure he called “housekeeping” to re-establish an old law that has not been followed for nearly 20 years — a 1990 resolution that called for a 40/30 percent leadership premium for the chairman and vice chairman. But after commissioners went eight years without a raise (largely because they were never willing to take the political heat for voting themselves one), in 2000 they agreed to reform their pay structure to a newer plan linking commission salaries to the county mayor’s — which is set by the state to receive an automatic increase in minimum salary each year based on the percentage increase given to state employees for the previous fiscal year.

The newer plan set the base commissioner salary at $16,230 and gave the chairman and vice chairman an extra $5,000 and $2,500, respectively. All commission raises would be the same percentage the county mayor received.

But a funny thing happened alog the way to another increase. Budget hawks raised a squawk.

“I understand that this was a law on the books, but when this law was on the books, the rate of [commissioner] pay was only $6,000 a year,” Graham said. “It makes a big difference.”

So the commissioners slashed the proposed raises going forward but made them retroactive. That means the chairman and vice chairman (and past ones) will get a something akin to a one-time bonus, but based on the percentage factor, their next regular pay checks going forward will be lower.

They either really need calculators, or they need a debate to separate the raise seekers from the savings seekers.

This is the same commission that in February 2015 privately circulated a letter to ask state legislators to disconnect their pay from the mayor’s and again allow the body to establish its own pay scale. When that failed — again thanks to budget hawks — some commissioners sought back pay under a state law they thought set their pay separately and higher. But Attorney General Herbert Slatery III penned an opinion that the law they hoped would benefit them actually applied to a different form of government.

Perhaps the commissioners should make more money, but they need to tackle the question head on, and stop hiding behind some law or memo or interpretation.

Just talk about it up front with the public and take a vote with discussion. And in the meantime, get yourselves some calculators.