For the second time in two years Grand Traverse County has managed to tick off employees and taxpayers alike over related issues: pay raises for county employees and a deeply flawed wage study.
After voting in late September to implement the wage study and to grant raises totaling more than $575,000 in 2010 alone, the county board reversed itself last week and said no raises this year -- for elected officials and key employees, anyway.
Two county employee unions already received wage increases similar to those in the study but did not agree to implement the wage study this year. Other unions are still talking.
County Administrator Dennis Aloia has recommended 1.5 percent raises for elected officials and eliminaton of their 10 percent health insurance co-pay. The board will consider his recommendation today.
The whole thing is a mess. The September vote to implement the wage study and the October vote to not implement it were both unanimous; if there is confusion, it apparently starts at the top.
The board seems ready, however, to look again at the wage and job classification study. The Segal Co. study, completed in 2008, called for almost 40 percent increases for some department heads and elected officials over three years; the average employee was to see about a 9 percent raise.
The study was almost immediately criticized because some job classifications and wage measures were compared to larger counties with more employees and bigger populations.
To make matters worse, the study was mostly completed before the economic meltdown of 2008 and 2009, and many of its findings are hopelessly out of date. In 2008 the board voted to delay implementation for a year because of the economy.
Despite all that, however, the county has stuck with the findings -- but has twice rejected recommended pay raises.
Commissioner Christine Maxbauer last week said she wanted to permanently shelve the study. Commissioner Beth Friend had a slightly different take: "This mixed message we keep sending to employees is not fair," she said. "We need to go back and dust off (the study) and decide does it have merit or does it not."
Friend is right. But any such effort has to be done with care. The county is obliged to look at what the study said were the most glaring shortcomings and offer fixes if appropriate. The study called for raises of $5,000 up to $40,000 per year for some managers and department heads.
But taxpayers will have to have assurances that comparisons used for the study are valid. That can be tricky and time-consuming stuff. The Segal study cost the county $190,000 and hasn't met muster.
Fairness to employees and the people who pay the bills must be the goal here; but so far, no one seems able to say what that is.
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