Published: November 14, 2007 12:00 pm      

Reader disapproves of raises for county officials, Vaughn says long overdue, Rinehart says priorities are skewed

Editor’s note: District 1 officials were willing to comment but Willa Johnson was not in office for the vote in question.



A reader from Harrah, who wished to remain anonymous, recently asked The Sun, why county officials are allowed to give themselves raises.

“I really don’t think elected officials should be allowed to give themselves a raise during their term of office. We elect them at a certain salary and they should be required to serve that term at the salary we agreed to pay them when they were elected,” he wrote in an e-mail.

He was responding to an $8,000 raise approved in September by all eight elected county officials.

According to District 3 County Commissioner Ray Vaughn, the officials were approving the maximum basic salary allowed by a 1993 law by the Oklahoma Legislature.

According to Title 19 Section 180.74, the basic salaries of county officers in counties with a service-ability factor of $400,000 or less should be no less than $19,000 and no more than $39,000.

When the law came into effect, Tulsa County officers immediately raised their basic salaries to $39,000, Vaughn said.

“Some counties immediately did it and some others waited. I don’t know but I would assume we’re one of the last counties to use the funds that were actually allowed,” Vaughn said.

Prior to the $8,000 raise, county officers also received a raise that equals about $145 a month, Vaughn said. That raise is based on changes in the county’s available revenue, the amount of services performed and the value of those services, according to Title 19 Section 180.71.

Because the salaries are based partly on workload and not just the basic salaries, officials make about $109,000 before benefits, Vaughn said. He also said his and other county officials jobs are comparable to that of city managers in large cities but that they make less. Unlike state legislators or city council members, the county officers are executive officials, he said.

“It’s certainly not above the value of someone who has to run an entity this size. Oklahoma City for example is of course a smaller area but a larger budget. The city manager and the people that run it make considerable more than this. We have no county manager. We’re basically the legislative and the executive branch of county government. For a county this size, it’s certainly not out of line,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn said the board had “just decided against” the raise when it had come up several times in the past.

According to District 2 County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, he initially voted with other county officials to approve the pay raise but voted against the supplemental budget which included it after the budget board chose not to fund the $80,000 of needed engineering funding to replace the Reno Avenue bridge running over Crooked Oak Creek.

The bridge, according to Rinehart, had only a seven percent sufficiency rating.

In a press release he put out after the vote, Rinehart questioned the officials’ priorities in funding their pay raises and putting $214,405.00 in a reserve fund while rejecting the $80,000 engineering cost.

“I wasn’t happy with their vote,” Rinehart said Tuesday.