Ramsey County Board looks at 1% pay raise

When Ramsey County commissioners held a hearing in 2007 to get the public's take on a 25 percent pay raise for themselves, only two people showed up to speak against it — and one didn't even live in the county. It passed.

So it was no surprise that last week's public hearing for the Ramsey board's modest 1 percent hike proposed for 2014, slated for a vote on Tuesday, drew only one opponent. At the same time, another resident launched a petition urging the county to peg salary changes to household income.

The fact that Richard Moses, a retired data analyst from New Brighton, and Ed Davis, a St. Paul substitute public schoolteacher, bothered at all reflects the lingering effects of the Ramsey board's votes in the past 12 years to double its salary.

Both insisted that not much should be read into the fact that such pay hikes typically draw little public opposition. Most people either aren't aware of it or are too busy to take the time to testify, they said.

"Nobody in the private sector gets a 25 percent raise unless there were exceptional circumstances … It's a sort of slow corruption, is what goes on," said Moses, a former county charter commissioner who tried in vain to pass an amendment limiting board pay hikes to the rate of inflation.

Davis, a former city planner, last week posted a petition on Change.org urging the Ramsey County Board to adopt the county's median household income as its salary — about $53,000. If the board followed that approach, it would mean a 37 percent pay cut.

"They should remember that they're working for the public, that their primary mission is to build community," he said.

Although Ramsey's technically is a part-time board, most commissioners put in full-time hours. So in 2002, in an effort to reflect the job's increasing demands and the county's rank, they considered a 45 percent hike — a raise of about $22,500 — before settling on 20 percent. Five years later they approved the 25 percent increase.

Hennepin County commissioners this year make $100,379, followed by Ramsey County, $84,048; Dakota County, $68,000; Anoka County, $59,945; and Washington County, $52,713.

Under the raise expected to be approved Tuesday, Ramsey County commissioners would get an increase of $840, making their salary $84,888. The board chair (currently Rafael Ortega) would get an additional $867, making that salary $87,542.

Two Ramsey commissioners said last week that they will vote against the pay hike: Janice Rettman, who has never approved a raise in her 16 years on the County Board, and Blake Huffman, who was elected to the board in November.

Rettman said that no one has made a good case why another pay raise is necessary. "You're going to get me the way I am [regardless of the pay], and I'm going to give 100 percent," she said.

"Lots of people I talk to are hurting, and in context it seems a little out of place to give ourselves any raise," he said. "It sends the wrong message. It should be zero for quite a while."