Clark County will do an in-house compensation study that will include comparisons to private-sector compensation packages, the county’s human resources director said Thursday.
Francine Reis told commissioners about the study after Deputy Administrator Glenn Olson said the county’s structural budget deficit needs to be corrected and it can’t be fixed with revenue increases or budget cuts alone.
With the collapse of the economy in 2008, the county first went into cutting mode; the county’s general fund budget, projected at $280 million for the next two years, has been cut by $62 million since the 2007-08 budget.
Now it’s going into reorganization mode.
The county’s revenues grow by 4 percent a year while costs grow by 6 percent, Olson said.
The commissioners met Thursday for a three-hour retreat at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center. On the agenda: the possibility that the county will not be able to meet its $4.7 million debt obligation by 2012 given the drop off of real estate excise taxes, the structural budget deficit, and budget-busting work-force costs.
As for the debt problem, Commissioner Steve Stuart ordered Olson to consider selling Tri-Mountain Golf Course, for which the county pays $500,000 a year.
The course has been a public money pit since the Port of Ridgefield launched it in 1994 as an economic-development scheme. The county took over the course in 1997, having earlier volunteered to help the port finance the project.
Stuart said he doesn’t care if the county has to do a short sale.
“Let’s get out from under this debt. It’s crushing,” Stuart said. “A lot of people are short-selling their houses and taking the loss.”
As commissioners will be prioritizing services this year, “a golf course doesn’t even make the list,” Stuart said.
As part of working toward a sustainable budget, Olson said the commissioners are going to have to decide how to permanently decrease how fast costs grow.
Olson listed seven reasons why the county can no longer operate within its revenue structure. The reasons include a regulatory environment, the fact automation and regionalization have not significantly reduced costs and costly urban services.
Employee costs key
At the top of the list: work-force costs.
Employee-related costs are the biggest driver of overall cost increases, Reis said.
The county has approximately 1,650 employees.
Salaries and benefits cost $291 million for the biennium, or one-third of the total county budget for 2011-12 of $887.5 million.
Reis said the compensation study will be more complex than it seems at first glance, for several reasons: some county positions do not have equivalent private-sector jobs for comparison; the county is bound by laws specific to the public sector, including laws affecting retirement benefits and compensation; a disproportionately high percentage of workers are represented by labor groups; and the fact compensation data is not as easy to obtain from the private sector as it is from the public sector.
The county currently uses comparisons from similarly sized counties in Washington and Oregon.
Reis said she expects to have results to share with commissioners later this year along with a set of recommendations.
Stuart said he wants the compensation study to include pre-recession numbers, so the county can see how it paid employees compared to the private sector when times were good.
Health care costs have grown significantly, Reis said.
Approximately half of Clark County’s employees are now on track to start paying a portion of their health insurance premiums in 2012.
According to the agreements, the employees will pay 7 percent of the 2012 rates. That’s still less than many private-sector workers pay.
Info to go public
Commissioners hear regularly from residents who are upset with employee compensation.
The county publishes pay ranges by job title and salaries for elected officials on its website, but employees were notified this week their specific information will be released.
In response to a public disclosure request filed by Camas resident Margaret Tweet, the county will be releasing to Tweet the following information on each county employee: name and job title, pay rates for 2010 and 2011, pay increase for 2011 (if any), cost of county-provided benefits, leave accrual balances as of Dec. 31, 2010, and the value of total compensation and benefits.
Employees were notified Wednesday of the request in a weekly county online newsletter. They were reassured certain information, such as their Social Security numbers, are not subject to disclosure.
