11 county workers earn over $200K in 2020
Proposed study will compare jobs to pay rates
Franklin County officials hope to soon finish a contract for an updated study of county job classifications and salaries with a goal of potentially setting comparable pay rates for similar jobs in county agencies and offices managed by different office-holders or boards.
More than a dozen offices, including agencies under the administration of the board of commissioners, could be involved in the study of a total payroll that reached nearly $396 million last year. Eleven employees received total pay of more than $200,000 last year.
The goal, said Franklin County Human Resources Director Robert Young, is parallel pay rates for county positions requiring similar responsibilities.
“That’s the intention — a more-unified pay plan across the whole county spectrum,” he said.
Franklin County Administrator Kenneth Wilson said that could create "a leveling of the playing field for positions that, when you point factor the knowledge, skills and abilities, people don’t feel the need to agency or office shop.
"It gives a director and management of a particular office the ability to impact their work environment for employees and make it a place where people want to be," Wilson said. "They don’t lose somebody simply because there’s another pay scale in another county agency that pays you, in theory, $1.50 more an hour to do a job that’s almost the
same or is the same.”
The review was supposed to be completed last year, but the ongoing coronavirus pandemic delayed the hiring of a consultant, he said.
“We always are looking at keeping our wages competitive with the market — those we compete with for employees from various sectors in the county's economy,” Wilson said. “We also put a value on pay equity and looking at positions and making sure people are paid in an equitable fashion.”
Full salary information for county employees is posted on the “Franklin County, OH Open Finance” website (https://franklincountyohio.payroll.socrata.com/), which tracks county spending.
The database includes commissioner agencies, other countywide elected offices, judicial operations and some other levy agencies, including the county Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health and the Developmental Disabilitie boards.
It does not, however, include other boards that involve the county and city of Columbus, including the Central Ohio Transit Authority and the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, Wilson said.
The totals include base pay, overtime pay and other pay, the latter covering bonus and incentive pay, cellphone and other allowances, and payouts for earned time when employees leave their positions. And they're gross figures, meaning before taxes and other paycheck deductions.
For 2021, year to date, a total of $281.25 million in base, overtime and other pay has been disbursed to more than 8,400 employees, including 6,637 full-time employees.
For all of 2020, that total was nearly $396 million to more than 15,000 people, including about 6,700 full-time employees. Payouts for 2019 reached about $359 million-plus to 11,365 employees, including 7,182 full-timers.
Last year, 11 of about 6,700 full-time county employees received more than $200,000 in total pay. The top 10 highest-paid Franklin County employees for 2020 included in the Open Finance database and their pay (rounded to the nearest dollar) were:
• Jed Morison, superintendent and CEO of the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities, $272,107.94.
• Dr. Kevin Jenkins, Franklin County chief deputy coroner, $268,309.
• Dr. John Daniels, Franklin County deputy coroner/ forensic pathologist, $254,009.
• Dr. Andrew Sexton, Franklin County deputy coroner/ forensic pathologist, $250,301.
• Dr. Maneesha Pandey, Franklin County deputy coroner/ forensic pathologist, $246,374.
• Theodore Beidler, projects manager, Franklin County Engineer's office, $224,025.
• Charles Spinning, executive director of Franklin County Children Services, $223,993.
• Kenneth Wilson, Franklin County administrator, $221,026.
• Dorothy Yeager, chief business officer for the Board of Developmental Disabilities, $205,399.
• Adam Frumkin, chief information officer at the county Data Processing Center, $203,118.
Four of the Top 10 county salaries last year were paid to forensic pathologists in the Franklin County Coroner's office. In 2018, the Franklin County commissioners approved an increase in starting salaries for the positions to $225,000 annually, up from about $140,000 prior.
The total still is less than pathologists can earn in the private sector.
“Right now, when you look at some of the recruitment, job postings for them, they can go way higher than $300,000,” said Dr. Anahi M. Ortiz, Franklin County coroner.
Part of the issue is an ongoing shortage of students graduating from medical school with focus on forensic pathology. Ortiz said two forensic pathologists retired this year, leaving her office with four.
Two new pathologists are scheduled to join the staff in coming months. In September, the Franklin County commissioners signed off on a contract with a firm to help recruit replacements. Ortiz said the hope is to have eight pathologists in place to try and help keep up with caseloads.
Nearly half of last year's total payroll spending — $191 million-plus — went to public safety and judicial offices. And of the $8.3 million paid in overtime costs, about $3.9 million went to the Franklin County Sheriff's office, up from about $3.5 million in 2019.
The latter is attributable, in part, to the coronavirus pandemic, said Maureen Kocot, spokeswoman for the sheriff's office.
The sheriff 's office also is shortstaffed at the moment, with 645 deputies under a budget with room for more than 700. Kocot said the office just launched a hiring blitz, looking to employ as many as 108 more deputies and two dozen or so civilian staff members because of increased staffing needed with the opening of the new Franklin County jail on Fisher Road West of Downtown slated for early next year.
Wilson said the salary totals are in line with other large counties nationally with comparable annual budgets.
“If you do a comparison, look at our positions versus peer counties, large counties with populations of a million or more — Fulton County, Georgia; Fairfax County, Virginia; the Mecklenburg County/charlotte area (in North Carolina) — you look at those places that have budgets of almost $2 billion,” he said. “I feel like our salaries would be comparable. You won't find that our people are compensated above the mean.”
County salaries also have to be competitive locally, with state government, the city of Columbus, Ohio State University and other public and nonprofit agencies vying for workers.
“The city of Columbus is tough competition,” Wilson said. “A lot of those classifications over there pay well. … Some of our suburbs, they don't have as many positions, top-level positions, but you can make a good buck in some of those places. I do not think that we're out of line at all. If anything, I think there's always an ability to compensate at all levels of our organizations at a higher rate.”
The last classification and compensation study solicited by the Franklin County commissioners was done in 2016, with a focus on living wage and merit pay issues. (In 2019, the commissioners increased the minimum pay for about 1,300 county employees under their administration to $15 an hour, implementing one of the recommendations of a larger plan to address poverty in the community.)
A new compensation study was planned for early 2020 when COVID-19 hit, with no assurance of federal relief funding at the time and ample questions about how the pandemic would affect the local economy.
“We didn't know what type of fiscal calamity the county may face,” Wilson said. “It wouldn't have been wise to do a classification and compensation study, either, when you don't think you have intentions to come up with a plan to implement. The worst thing to do is to do a … study you don't intend to implement. Think about what that does to workplace morale, if you're one of those people and you see that the market has shifted and you should be making more per hour and those that you work for say, 'No, we can't do that.'”
Franklin County is moving ahead with the study now, following a year and a half of changing employee expectations, increased telecommuting and other issues that make a review of job classifications and salary ranges timely.
“We are seeing, coming out of the pandemic, people are looking at a different type of work climate, they have a new appreciation for work-life balance, I think,” Wilson said, adding later, “The value of the benefits don't carry the weight they used to. People are younger and healthier. They'd rather have the money in their salary, they'd rather have different things than what a traditional employee 25 years ago would want.”
Young estimated it would cost $90,000 to $130,000 to hire a consultant to complete the study and offer recommendations for changes.
“I would think definitely we'd have something early first quarter of 2022, and we talk about implementation at that point in time,” he said. mkovac@dispatch.com @Ohiocapitalblog