Floyd County Supervisors consider compensation board options

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County supervisors are considering keeping a county compensation board to recommend salaries for county elected officials, although the way those recommendations would be dealt with has changed.

The three supervisors discussed the compensation board options at their regular meeting this week, held on Tuesday, Sept. 17. No official action was taken, but all three supervisors indicated they thought the compensation board system had been beneficial, and a decision will be made at a future meeting.

Supervisor Chair Mark Kuhn said the board needs to decide what to do because of legislation passed during the summer and signed by the governor, “because essentially the current compensation board will be no more.”

“We have to authorize it again, if that’s what we choose,” he said, “or we the supervisors can assume the authority and duty of just setting the salaries for the elected officials.”

The state legislative action dissolved all existing compensation boards, which since 1987 had been tasked with coming up with recommendations for salary changes each year for county elected officials – the supervisors, attorney, auditor, recorder, sheriff and treasurer.

“I feel the compensation board has been working,” said Supervisor Jim Jorgensen, but he added, “It’s not completely smooth all the time,” and the recommendations from the board don’t always align with what the supervisors can do within the budget.

Kuhn said the legislation doesn’t set a timeline for making a decision, and the supervisors could decide to start a compensation board in a future year, or dissolve a board that had been created at any time.

The main consideration now is timing, because in the past the compensation board had met in November and December to come up with its recommendations so they can be considered by the supervisors during budgeting time, which takes place the first several months of each new year.

If the supervisors decide to not form a new compensation board they would have to come up with salary amounts themselves, including doing the comparisons with similar positions in other counties, states, federal government and private enterprise that Iowa Code requires.

Part of the new legislation is that whether it’s a compensation board or board of supervisors, they have to “show their work,” documenting how they came up with the salary amounts.

“I’m going to say I don’t want that responsibility,” said Kuhn, whose term is up at the end of the year. Jorgensen will be leaving the board in mid-November as soon as the Nov. 5 election is certified and Jorgensen’s appointed position had been filled.

A new compensation board would continue to have seven members – two members appointed by the supervisors and one member each appointed by the five other elected officials. The officials could appoint the same people who had represented them before, or pick different people.

According to information from the Iowa State Association of Counties (ISAC), the biggest change is that the limitations for what the supervisors can do regarding elected officials’ salaries have been removed, whether there’s a compensation board or not.

In the past, the supervisors’ actions were limited once they got the salary recommendation from the compensation board.

They could pass the recommendation as presented, or if they wanted to reduce salary increases they had to do so for all the elected officials by the same percentage, except they could reduce their own salary increases by a greater amount, including taking no increase.

The supervisors could not grant salary increases greater than the compensation board recommendation.

Now with the change in legislation, the supervisors can approve a compensation schedule that is greater than or less than the compensation board recommendation and make adjustments to the compensation schedule for individual elected officials without being required to adjust by the same percentage for all others, according to information from ISAC.

One additional requirement is because of the state’s “Back the Blue” law, counties have to “set the sheriff’s salary so that it is comparable to the salaries paid to professional law enforcement administrators and command officers of the State Patrol, the Division of Criminal Investigation of the Department of Public Safety, and city police chiefs employed by cities of similar population to the population of the county.”

Also at the meeting this week, the Supervisors:

• Agreed to spend $3,379 for a sign on the entrance to the atrium between the courthouse and the Law Enforcement Center, identifying the Floyd County Courthouse and designating that as the public entrance.

• Delayed a decision on a property tax abatement that had been requested by the city of Charles City on properties it had acquired, until more information is available.