BENTONVILLE -- Benton County Judge-elect Barry Moehring's decision to forgo his projected raise for the next two years reflects an ongoing debate over setting pay for elected officials.
The Quorum Court has included in the 2017 budget a proposal to tie the pay of the officials elected countywide to the maximum pay set by the state. The salaries would be raised to 80 percent of the state maximum for 2017, which would increase the pay for the county judge and sheriff from $91,611 this year to $97,626 next year.
County budget
Benton County’s justices of the peace will review the 2017 budget when the Quorum Court’s Committee of the Whole meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Quorum Courtroom at the County Administration Building, 215 E. Central Ave. in Bentonville.
Source: Staff report
Other elected officials would see pay increases from $85,210 this year to $91,899 next year. The salaries would automatically increase as the Legislature increases the pay range for officials. Barb Ludwig, human resources administrator, has said the Legislature typically increases the range of pay 3 percent a year.
Moehring, justice of the peace for District 15, said he will donate the money from his raise to the Benton County 4H Clubs and to the Illinois River Watershed Partnership. The raise is expected to be about $12,000 over the next two years.
Moehring said he isn't comfortable voting for a raise he would receive.
"I struggled with the idea of voting for a salary increase for myself," he said. "I'm the only member of the Quorum Court who will be voting on pay increases for a county office that I'll occupy next year. On the flip side, I like this budget. I think we've done a good job and there's a lot of good things included in the budget and I want to support it.
"I could abstain, but I decided a good compromise would be to take the entire raise slated for the county judge and make a donation to those two organizations," he said.
Ludwig said the Quorum Court has never set a policy or adopted an ordinance to handle raises for elected officials. In some years, she said, elected officials' pay would be increased by the same amount as employees' raises. Other years. there were no raises or raises were discussed but not funded.
She added the justices of the peace often couldn't agree on when to consider raises.
"It was just confusion," Ludwig said. "Some JPs wanted to announce prior to the filing period what the salary will be when the next group takes office, but then there wasn't money in that year's budget for it."
If the current proposal remains in the budget and is followed by the Quorum Court, Ludwig said, those questions could be settled.
"We've never accomplished getting anything that tied to the state ranges," she said.
Other elected officials said they haven't considered the raises an issue.
Coroner Daniel Oxford said he wasn't following the discussion of raises. Oxford said he remembered it took the Quorum Court several years to bring the coroner's pay into line with other elected officials after the state recommended it be done.
"Someone always thought the timing wasn't right," Oxford said. "Some JPs thought it shouldn't be done during an election year. Do you do it when someone has been in office for a while or when somebody new is coming in? What's the right time? I don't know. We've been busy, and I haven't even thought about it."
Rod Grieve, the assessor-elect, said he has been working through the transition in the Assessor's Office and not following the budget debate.
"I don't get to vote on whether or not I get a raise so it's not been on my radar," he said.
Sheriff-elect Shawn Holloway said he thinks the county should have adopted the practice of following the state ranges long ago to end the arguments.
Collector Gloria Peterson said she hasn't given the raise any thought. She said she'll wait to see what the Quorum Court does about the proposal.
Moehring said he selected the 4H Clubs and the Illinois River Watershed Partnership for the donations because the Quorum Court has already chosen to support those groups, and he thinks they provide good service to the residents of the county. Because the money for the raises comes from the county's taxpayers, he said, he wanted to put it toward a use the county has supported.
Tom Allen, justice of the peace for District 4, is also on the board of the Illinois River group. Allen said the partnership brings together representatives of governments and industry, environmental activists and others to work toward resolving the long-running dispute between Arkansas and Oklahoma over water quality in the Illinois River.
Oklahoma has set maximum levels for phosphorus in the river that Arkansas groups objected to. The issue has been in litigation for many years, Allen said, and the partnership is trying to bring the two states together on an agreement.
"They are a coordinator, a facilitator," Allen said. "They bring industry and environmentalists together. They also do a lot of education, to both children and adults, trying to educate people about what the watershed is, how to live with it and not pollute it."
Johnny Gunsaulis, Cooperative Extension agent for Benton County, said he will visit with Moehring to see if he has any specific ideas for the contribution to the 4-H program. Gunsaulis said the Benton County 4-H Clubs now have more than 600 members, and 24 community clubs involved in the youth education program.
"We've had a very successful program here for a long time," he said.
NW News on 12/09/2016