LEE COUNTY – The chairman of the Lee County Compensation Board told supervisors on Monday that this year’s recommendation, “could be the last action of the comp. board”.
Mel Sander’s prediction came true about five minutes later when the Lee County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 to disband the board.
Lee County Chairwoman Denise Fraise made the motion, saying the board has no teeth and the supervisors now have freedom to make their own determinations based on input from county officials.
“This is totally my opinion about it, but the final decision is with the board anyway, and I think our department heads are more than capable to advocate for themselves,” Fraise said.
The compensation board makes annual recommendations on pay increases for the county’s elected officials to include the Lee County Sheriff, County Attorney, Auditor, Recorder, Treasurer, and supervisors.
The board recommended increases to the Auditor, Recorder, and Treasurer’s office to get those positions all to the same pay rate of $84,000 per year last week. They didn’t recommend increases for the other elected officials, all of whom declined to seek a raise in the next fiscal year.
Fraise made the motion to disband the board, and Supervisor Chuck Holmes seconded the motion. Fraise got support from Holmes and Supervisor Garry Seyb, but Supervisor Ginger Knisely voted against the motion.
Knisely said the board is imperative to keeping the public involved in the discussion.
"I don’t think it’s in our best interest as a county to do away with the formal process of private sector input,” Knisely said.
Fraise said no matter what the comp board’s recommendation is, supervisors are going to have to do what the budget can support.
Seyb said following last week’s meeting he could see the raises were a struggle with the board trying to figure out where the county was with its finances.
“In the last four years, there’s only been one year that we followed exactly what they said,” he said.
Fraise said she didn’t recall ever following the comp board recommendations. Seyb said the last time was when the Back the Blue law was passed and the comp board recommended a 40% increase for the sheriff and a 10% increase for the rest of the elected officials, which in turn became an across-the-board increase for county staff.
He said the only struggle he sees without the board is that there are no controls as supervisors without the compensation board.
“With that being said, I think we’ve probably done a disservice to ourselves over the past 30 years, as far as where we’re at, as evidenced by where we’re ranked in the state. We’re 96th out of 99 counties (in salary),” he said.
“We’re 22nd in population and 22nd in valuation and, arguably, that’s kinda where the salary of supervisors should be.”
Fraise asked if the comp board or county did a comparative this year under the Back the Blue law to make sure Sheriff Elliott Vandenberg was still in the range dictated by the law.
Vandenberg said he was probably a little higher in salary than the comparatives would show. Budget Director Cindy Renstrom said she compared a dozen city, county, and state law enforcement administrators’ salaries and averaged them out. Vandenberg did not request an increase last week during the comp board meeting.
Supervisors will have to pass a resolution at an upcoming meeting to officially disband the board per county code.
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