When The Columbian slapped Erica Rainford’s $58,100 salary on its front page last spring, her bosses on the Port of Woodland commission got angry calls and letters.
But Rainford, the port’s executive director, saw things differently — and people she met around town, she said, were often surprised she wasn’t making more.
“For an executive-level position, I don’t think my salary was very high,” Rainford said.
Rainford’s closest local peer, David Ripp of the Port of Camas-Washougal, earned $93,150 in 2009. At the Port of Vancouver, Larry Paulson made $165,600. Counting private companies, the average Washington chief executive made $183,320 in 2008, federal statistics show.
Then Rainford’s board capped her 2010 salary.
Rainford plans to resign from the port by next month. She’s starting her own business: it’s still a secret, she said, but it has something to do with food.
Pay wasn’t exactly the last straw, according to Rainford, 27 — she’s naturally drawn to the more dynamic private sector, she said.
But pay was part of it.
“The sky is the limit when you work for yourself,” Rainford said. “You can make nothing or make everything, but you’re the only one that you have to blame. … You can make as much money as you want in the private sector. But when you’re in the public sector, there’s a cap.
“And that’s fine, and there’s a reason for that,” Rainford added.
But the public sector wasn’t for Rainford. And some warn that if local governments let their wages erode, especially at the bottom and middle of the scale, they’ll set themselves up to lose a generation of young executives-in-training.
“Clark County has some extraordinarily talented people, and I think we’ve gotten people at bargain prices,” said Glenn Olson, deputy administrator of the county government. “We’re able to attract them early on in their careers, and they become very devoted civil servants. And it’s leadership that counts.”
Governments pay “pretty well” for low- and mid-level workers, Olson said, and make up the difference by promoting from within and paying executives less. But the supply of future leaders depends on that handsome starting pay, Olson thinks.
Olson, 53, also thinks the public is now demanding that wages fall for low- and mid-level public servants, without public executives’ pay going up.
Eventually, citizens might come to regret what they wished for.
“They want what we all want,” Olson said. “They want the continuation of everything they’ve expected to get from government, and they want to pay less. And economic times make that even more pronounced.”
— Michael Andersen
