Wadena County Board penalizes top officials with 2017 salary plan
When you spend 40 to 60 or even 70 hours a week doing your local government job, it probably doesn’t occur to you that your bosses will deny you the same pay increase that everyone else in your organization gets when the bosses approve annual pay scales.
Your job is described in Minnesota Statutes and has extensive responsibilities. For example:
The Auditor/Treasurer: responsible for every penny of the $22 million the county spends annually, for conducting elections, for serving as clerk to the county board, among a long list of other required duties.
The Sheriff: responsible for hiring and assigning sworn peace officers to protect and serve, and for operating the county jail that houses prisoners.
The County Attorney: responsible for deciding whether to charge people with crimes and for prosecuting hundreds of cases each year, for protecting at-risk children and for serving as attorney for the county board.
The Recorder: responsible for logging in every marriage license, birth certificate, land deed, death certificate or any other official document a county issues, and for making the documents available to citizens according to relevant statutes.
The County Engineer: responsible for the construction and maintenance of every foot of county road and every bridge that is part of a county road, and supervising every county construction and remodeling project and representing management during union negotiations.
When you hold any of these jobs, you might expect to be treated equally with other department heads when salaries are established annually.
But not if you work for Wadena County as the Auditor/Treasurer, Sheriff, County Attorney, Recorder or County Engineer.
If you are one of those five elected or appointed officials, you can expect to be paid at a rate lower than that of the other 150 full-time employees of Wadena County in 2017.
And don’t expect for your hard work and dedication to be acknowledged either. No “atta-girls” or “atta-boys”, no public thanks, or jobs well done for this bunch.
And the reasoning behind this treatment?
The reasoning, provided by Commissioner Dave Hillukka, who led the push to penalize the five officials, is that the officials already make too much money. They should not receive the pay increases of 2.5 percent next year, to bring them into equivalence with other employees of Wadena County, because Wadena County is a small county and because the top three jobs in Todd County are paid slightly less than the proposed salaries for the top three jobs in Wadena County.
This is the second time in recent years that a three-commissioner majority refused to provide the elected officials with pay increases equal to those received by all other employees. They did it in 2012 as well. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, the elected officials’ salaries were frozen at their 2008 rates. In 2015, three of the elected officials received a 5.5 percent raise to help make up for the lack of raises in previous years, but the Auditor/Treasurer was denied the 5.5 percent raise.
At most organizations in the U.S., if a person does his or her job well, is qualified by education and/or experience for his or her job, shows dedication to his or her work, makes personal sacrifices to allow more time for the job above and beyond 40 hours per week and is respected by peers and subordinates, then the person receives rewards in the form of regular pay increases that are similar to or greater than what other employees receive.
But not if you work for Wadena County as an elected or appointed official, according to Hillukka, Commissioner Rodney Bounds and Commissioner Sheldon Monson. If, in their opinions, you make too much money, then you won’t be treated the same as other department heads. So don’t expect anything more. Expect to be criticized, denigrated and kept as one of the lowest-paid officials in your position in the State of Minnesota.
Rin Porter has covered the Wadena County Board of Commissioners for several years as a freelance reporter.
