Charter Update: County Commissioner Salaries

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights wasn't the first on James Madison's list. 

It was third.

Prior to protecting freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, his draft Bill of Rights proposed an amendment to guarantee that Members of Congress could not raise their own pay. After a series of controversial pay raises by Congress in the 1980s, state legislatures began ratifying the amendment that had lingered nearly forgotten. It finally passed in 1992, 202 years after it was first proposed. 

 

Getting control of elected official salaries can be hard, slow work, until people get aroused. Then it can move quickly.

Jackson County's commissioners are by far the highest paid in the state of Oregon. They make $45,000 a year more than the state governor. A Jackson County, Oregon citizen group is proposing to cut county commissioner salaries nearly in half, back to $75,000 a year, with cost of living adjustments after that. People can disagree about the best way to control salary creep. Tam Moore questions whether it is best to put the mechanism into the county's charter document. Moore has been a journalist for six decades, a career interrupted by service in the Vietnam War and then a term as county commissioner in the mid-1970s.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Tam Moore

      Fiddling with salaries

When Oregon voters passed a Constitutional amendment allowing county home rule charters back in 1958, chances are that no one thought salaries of public officials ought to be set by a vote of the people. Fast forward to 2023 and that’s exactly where a group of reform-minded sponsors want as part of a suite of three amendments to the Charter for Jackson County Oregon.

This blog has seen hundreds of words about charter revision in the past few days. Let me add mine, as a former commissioner who was in office when county voters approved the present charter in May, 1978. That charter took effect January 8, 1979, which was my last day in office.

The notion of “home rule” swept the country in the reform era of the early 20th century as local governments, often very large cities, set themselves apart from general laws enacted by states. The home rule concept holds that “matters of local interest” can best be decided by a local governing body – the city council or a county’s governing body.

The state didn’t get around to giving counties home rule options until 1959 when the enabling legislation implementing the 1958 Constitutional amendment (now Article VI Section 10 of the ever-expanding Oregon Constitution) became law. Charters, and their amendments, require approval of local voters. They are the covenant between the governed and those who exercise the governing powers.

Here's the way Jackson County’s charter puts it:

The people of Jackson County, exercising the power to govern themselves provided by Section 10, Article VI, of the Oregon Constitution and enabling legislation enacted pursuant thereto, hereby grant the County authority over matters of County concern to the fullest extent now or hereafter granted or allowed by the Constitution or a law of the United States or of Oregon, as fully as though each power comprised in that authority were specified in this Charter.

Progressive county citizens took an interest in the possibility of enacting a charter at least twice before the charter was adopted by a slim margin in that 1978 primary election – 28,907 votes for, 27,346 votes against. There’s a 1962 report of a draft charter debated in at least two community forums. It died from lack to consensus to put it before the voters. After I arrived in the county in 1967, the League of Women Voters studied the question again.

The hang up, apparently a repeat of issues from the 1962 charter debates, was that some current elected officials opposed restructuring parts of county government. Notions such as expanding the three-person Board of Commissioners or building a county-manager form of government conflicted with the people electing their Assessor, Sheriff, Treasurer, Clerk and Surveyor.

The 1977 Home Rule Charter Committee, formed by order of the Board of Commissioners, solved that conflict. They left unchanged the various elective offices, and used general language directing what future Boards of Commissioners were required to do. That was apparently enough, barely, to see approval of the charter.

The charter (in Section 24) provides that:

The compensation of personnel in the service of the County shall be fixed by the Board of County Commissioners, except that elected officials' salaries shall be fixed annually by the Budget Committee.

That authority is broad.

It allows the Board and Citizen Budget Committee members to be sensitive to whatever current financial realities exist along with what the current market is for people doing comparable work. And because the process is governed by Oregon Local Budget law, it assures that setting compensation takes place after public notice and in public meeting where citizens have their say.

Petitions being circulated now would change a critical part of the policy, placing a dollar-figure ($75,000) on commissioner salaries in 2027 contingent on voter approval of expanding the Board to five from its present three commissioners.

Fiddling with salaries in a county charter doesn’t make sense. The real objective of the current reform effort seems to be increasing the number of commissioners. Unsaid is the notion of making the office part time. But how do you arrive at proper compensation for a part-time position if the minimum pay is already set at $75,000 a year?

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