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Christmas came early for Cook County employees.
Following a lengthy debate Cook County Commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the Compensation Study Working Group recommendation to raise county 2023 pay rates to 95 percent of a market-based study of 20 Minnesota counties.
Voting for the pay raises were commissioners Ginny Storlie, David Mills, Robert (Bob) Svalseson and Ann Sullivan. Voting against was Stacy Hawkins.
The vote came at the board’s last meeting of the year on Tuesday, December 20.
Although the 5.5 percent levy for 2023 didn’t include funds for a wage hike, County Administrator Joerke said the $1,007,725 in new pay could come from a variety of sources. Joerke said the fiscal year budget of 2023 had $196,454 in contingency funds that could be applied to the pay increases. He also said the remaining $811,275 of unbudgeted money could be found in the general fund, highway, and public health and human services fund balances, and the American Rescue Act Plan (ARPA) funding, or a combination of those funds could be used to make up the difference.
During public comments before the start of the meeting Arvis Thompson, Lloyd Speck, Rae Phiepho, Bob Mattson, and a letter read by Joerke from Catheryn Johnson, Schroeder, were against the raise in wages.
Johnson said she didn’t support a raise for employees or commissioners. “To put the burden on country residents is egregious and out of touch.” She added that if the commissioners wanted working class people to move to the county, “not to tax them to death.”
Speck said the wage and compensation study used 14 counties that had up to 229 times the population of Cook County. The average pay for a non-county worker in Cook County is $13.94 while the county pays a range of $15.90 to $42 per hour plus $15 per hour in benefits. He asked commissioners to keep taxes down, noting, other than one commissioner, they had shown “poor stewardship of the dollar.” He added, “What have you done to save taxpayers one dollar? Do some soul searching. Taxpayers should not have to do your job. I’m probably speaking for nothing. No one listens anyway.”
Rae Piepho talked about the economy, noting inflation is eating away at people’s personal spending. “Inflation is rising. Is this the time to be thinking of a one million dollar plus wage increase? “She asked commissioners to consider the folks who are having a hard time paying rent, paying for food, etc. and not vote to raise their taxes. “Who is looking out for the taxpayer?”
Arvis Thompson had a lot of questions about the wage and compensation study. She noted there was a lot of data but much to the data was undefined. She asked if numbers were being pulled from a hat in one case. In paying for the wage increases Thompson noted that funds might be used from the American Rescue Act this coming year. But, she added, “What rescue plan do you expect to use in 2024? Should we expect ten percent higher budgets in the future?”
Bob Mattson said he looked at population densities for counties. Per mile Cook County had four people, Lake County five, St. Louis County 32, Carlton County has ten times as many people. “These are the people who absorb your tax rates. To me you are kicking the whole can down the road. In the future, who are you going to look at to pay for this? The four people per mile in the county?”
Two county employees, Bob Thompson and Andrew Beaver spoke in favor of the wage and compensation study. Thompson noted that there are a lot of rich people moving into the county, some owning second and third homes, He said by granting the pay raises it would go a long way to keeping the county competitive and go a long way to keeping employees working for the county.
Andrew Beavers said he and his wife don’t live in a $300,000 house nor do they own a cabin or land other than their homestead. “We don’t own multiple vacation homes,” noted Beavers. He said the wage increase would allow employees to live a better life. He added that he felt the study was done fairly and the work was not skewed. “If you can’t trust experts, who can you trust?” he said of the findings of the study.
When it came time to discuss the study Commissioner Stacy Hawkins said she found some of the data in the study troublesome. In looking at the county attorney position she asked why six metro counties were used and not Lake of the Woods, the county most like Cook County in terms of size and pay scales. Commissioner Dave Mills said data couldn’t be “cherry picked” from the study, but Hawkins advised holding off until more people’s questions could be answer about the data used in the study.
When it came time to talk about raising commissioner salaries once again Dave Mills led the discussion. Mills pushed for a raise from $24,000 to about $39,000 per year. His motion didn’t receive any support and after much back and forth, Commissioner Hawkins motioned for a raise of $3,600 per year which passed unanimously.
Commissioners voted 5-0 to set the 2023 levy at 5.5 percent.
For more on the county board discussion about the raise increase please read Cook County Connections.
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