Voters approve raise for Placer County supes
By Richard Chang, Sacramento Bee
Voters in fiscally conservative Placer County last week overwhelmingly approved an initiative that will more than double county supervisor salaries, a reversal of two previous elections in which they handily rejected modest raises.
While supporters praised the result as a fair compensation boost, opponents said voters mistakenly believed they were installing another pay restriction.
“It used words like ‘limit’ and ‘restrict,’” said Tom Hudson, a Roseville activist and executive director of the California Taxpayer Protection Committee. “Based on that, a person who wasn’t familiar with the county charter would get the impression this was putting limits. They wouldn’t have realized this was a 139 percent increase.”
Supervisor pay had been capped at $30,000 annually after voters approved a 1992 initiative sponsored by a local taxpayers group. Placer County voters had twice turned down proposals to increase that amount, first in 1998 for $35,000 annually and again in 2008 for $48,000 a year. Nearly 75 percent of voters rejected the 2008 proposal, according to the Placer County Office of Elections.
But last week, Measure B won with more than 62 percent of the vote.