Salary perks to be eliminated for some El Dorado officials
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
Seven of the region’s highest-paid elected officials stand to see significant reductions in their six-figure paychecks after El Dorado County supervisors moved to eliminate perks that inflated their salaries.
Beginning with their next term in 2015, El Dorado officials – including the sheriff, auditor-controller, treasurer-tax collector and four other elected department heads – will lose pay boosts for longevity, professional certificates or unused leave time.
Should Sheriff John D’Agostino seek and win re-election, he would see his salary fall from $226,411 to $177,986. County Auditor-Controller Joe Harn and Treasurer-Tax Collector C.L. Rafferty would see respective pay cuts from 2012 earnings of $196,366 and $179,332 to $148,699 and $145,538 – the average total salaries for similar regional officials – in 2015.
El Dorado leaders say the salary add-ons began more than a dozen years ago in better economic times when El Dorado County took steps to retain valued employees for fear of losing them to other government agencies or private employers.
The perks, tied to contracts the county had offered its public employee unions, wound up paying the El Dorado officeholders well more than the average for elected officials in other Sacramento regional counties.