El Dorado supes restore pay perks for electeds
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
Thirteen months ago, El Dorado County supervisors voted to strip generous salary enhancements for seven elected officials amid cries that the county was vastly overpaying its public servants.
On Tuesday, the board reversed itself and restored most of the pay cuts.
Major salary reductions were due to go into effect when officeholders were sworn in for new four-year terms in January. But the board voted to reinstate salary enhancements for professional certificates and years of service for seven elected officials.
Supervisors also voted to give additional pay perks to Sheriff John D’Agostini and Auditor-Controller Joe Harn, boosting their salaries with enhancements that are based on the earnings of their top assistants.
The vote was taken after board Chairwoman Norma Santiago argued that supervisors had to correct an unforeseen equity problem: Under the new pay formula, at least five of the elected officials would be earning less, in some cases significantly less, than top assistants.
This is going to cost millions instead of saving millions and comes at a time when the county budget is in a shortfall of millions and lay offs could be seen. Lame duck incompetents like this on the BOS should not be allowed to vote on anything just before they leave for unemployment. What a Christmas gift this is! For some it gives them near a 100k raise per year!
Election’s over. They can show their true colors now.
Elected officials always look out for their own benefit, not yours.
Government is not your friend.
Ms. Dog, I don’t usually respond to your posts since, while we might occasionally have similar positions, we certainly have different starting lines.
But your suggestion that “Government is not your friend” reminds me of Pogo who proclaimed, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
A bit sexist, in long retrospect, but the fact is that, in the process of imagining that we are electing the government that we want, we usually end up electing the government we deserve. And the longer I live, the less government we seem to deserve. And, conversely, the more we probably need.
Any problem I might have with government is focused on the ignorance of the voters. We won’t survive without involved and competent government direction – how this might be possible, given the current ignorance of our citizens, is beyond both my intellect and, likely, my life span.
Government is NEVER our friend!!! E V E R!!! And the ignorant keep voting them in.
Typical pathetic, self-serving government response to a systemic problem that needs a complete overhaul, simply throw more money at it til it disappears under the radar.
More proof that recent huge raises for county supervisors failed to produce better decisions.
What you don’t seem to get, Gaspen, is that government is us. Always, and in every circumstance. And, in our country and system of government, we have the opportunity to enforce that notion without even resorting to violence.
But, perhaps, not for long. If stupidity continues to be treated as a virtue, it’s hard to say what will surface to oppose it.
Ga, you resemble that remark, unless you dont vote. In other words, you are as ignorant as those you accuse of being ignorant. Finger pointer….
Just to understand Gaspen government is not our friend when they defend the country, government was not our friend during World War 2, when the invest in technology, when they provide investment for medical breakthroughs. Not our friend when they rescue people in dire situations. Not our friend when they inspect and develop the food we eat. Not our friend when they provide air traffic control services. Definitely not our friend with emergency services. And those dam schools that provided us with an education etc. etc. etc. I would agree government can be a problem when it insets itself at,levels that are unproductive but to say they are never ever our friend is something I have trouble believing.
Its like this on every level on both sides. Congress just voted in a pay raise in the budget…disgusting. The collapse is happening and immoral corrupt people are everywhere. There are two types of people in this world. Those that think die hard is a christmas movie and those that are wrong.
Hopefully we can all drown our sorrows in feet of snow soon.
Copper, you nailed it … twice.
Slapshot, any of those “services” you mention government doing for us could easily be done by private contractors, better, for less money. Government instead forces us to pay them for services we may or may not want. It isn’t altruism that drives government. It’s pure greed for power and money.
If we hired private campanies to perform our services for us, at least we could fire them when they proved to be incompetent.
This is really a local level issue for the members of the BOS who are leaving employment due to term limits and can’t resist a last slap to the face of the voters and county employees on their way out. People in the area will be smart to remember them and never hire them in the future for any job. This act may very likely cost hard working county employees their jobs and is a very low class act really without precedence. The people they are giving the double pay bonuses to are already earning mostly way above a six figure income and really can’t justify in any way the increase and are now going to be some of the highest paid in the North state. The next board needs to reverse this permanently.
It seems to me the easiest solution is to reduce subordinate pay !
And these pay raises were led by Santiago ? Geeeeze, she is sucking at the bottom of the barrel. I hope she can’t do anything else before she lets the door hit her in the butt. Good riddance.
Kae Who dat C L Rafferty ? Back in the 90s the wife of Rafferty, no doubt the owner of the Mountain Democrat
had the same job.
All in the Family ?
C. L. Raffety is a woman.