County charter will add $700K to top officials’ payroll cost
Somehow this has escaped the Plain Dealer’s notice, but the immediate impact of our new County Charter will be an annual payroll increase of something like $700,000 for the new array of elected and appointed officials.
The new Charter, to take effect in 2011, replaces the three County Commissioners with an elected County Executive and eleven County Council members; replaces the Auditor and Recorder with an appointed Fiscal Officer, the Engineer with an appointed Director of Public Works, the Coroner with an appointed Medical Examiner, and the Sheriff, Treasurer, and Clerk of Courts with appointed positions by the same titles. It also creates a new appointed Director of Law. (In all cases “appointed” means “hired by the County Executive with confirmation by the County Council.”)
If you’re a fast counter, you’ll have noticed that our new, efficient system will swap ten existing political jobs for twelve new political jobs, plus seven new top executives hired by those politicians, for a total of nineteen Charter positions. This 90% increase in top payroll slots is the big reason for the added expense. If you assume that all the salaries for elected offices remain the same for their appointed counterparts, and that the new Fiscal Officer and Law Director each make a modest $90,000 to $100,000, the new system will automatically add at least half a million dollars to the County’s payroll.
But those assumptions are pretty improbable. County Treasurer Jim Rokakis currently earns $75,860 a year to manage $1.5 billion in annual tax collections and half a billion dollars in County investments, along with other duties. What do you think are the chances of hiring a competent, experienced replacement for that kind of pay? The Coroner, who must be an MD, now works for $121,000 a year; do you know a lot of experienced doctors who will settle for that? The Engineer, responsible for two hundred employees who maintain 220 bridges and more than 800 miles of County and township roads, currently makes $107,000; the top of the pay scale for the Commissioner of Engineering and Construction at the City of Cleveland, with many fewer workers and responsibilities, is nearly $140,000. There’s no County Law Director now, but the Cleveland Law Director’s top lieutenants like the Chief Corporate Counsel earn up to $130,000.
Here’s a dirty little counterintuitive secret: Public officials work for less when they’re elected than when they’re hired (and can be fired) by another political boss. Call it the Politician “Be Your Own Boss” Discount. The voters of Cuyahoga County have just decided to waive that discount and pay the going rate for professional help.
Courtesy of Rokakis, I got estimates from County human resources staff of the salaries the County will need to offer to fill the seven new senior executive jobs created by Issue 6, along with current salaries for the equivalent elected positions. Based on these estimates — with a modest 25% adjustment for employer taxes, health insurance, pension and other fringe benefits — I calculate that the Charter will (conservatively) add almost $700,000 to the County’s annual top-level personnel costs. Here’s my calculation:
(Note: The salary number I got from Rokakis for the current Sheriff was $91,775. A few weeks ago the Plain Dealer reported that Sheriff Reid’s salary is $103,000. I’ve used the PD’s number.)
Yes, of course, you get what you pay for. I’m sure many “yes” voters, if they had known, would still have found $700,000 a year a reasonable price to pay for fewer politicians and more professional administrators in charge of County business.
Except… we’ll be electing more politicians than we used to. And all the new professional administrators will “serve at the pleasure” of one of them.
But it’s Reform. So it must be more professional and efficient. Otherwise the PD would have explained all this to us before the election.
Wouldn’t they?
(Of course Roldo got this right weeks ago.)