SLO County supervisors vote against giving themselves a 20% pay raise. Here’s why
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors rejected a 20% pay raise that staffers said would make the county competitive with other Central Coast employers.
The raise would have bumped supervisors’ annual salaries to $109,241.60 by June 2024, up from $90,417.60 per year, according to a staff report.
The board voted 3-2 against the wage hike on Feb. 7, with supervisors Debbie Arnold, John Peschong and Jimmy Paulding joining forces to reject the pay increase.
“I’d like for us today to show some leadership on the shortcomings of our county funding and vote no,” Arnold said.
Supervisors Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Bruce Gibson, however, voted to pass the pay hike
“This isn’t about enriching ourselves,” Ortiz-Legg said. “I’m looking out for people that will be running in the future, particularity the younger generations. They need to be able to say, ‘Hey, I can do this and walk away from my private sector job.’ ”
Why did SLO County supervisors consider 20% pay raise?
According to the staff report, the proposed 20% raise would have been implemented in three stages.
Supervisors would have first received a $13,561.60 increase on April 16, then a $2,600 bump on June 25, followed by a $2,662.40 increase on June 23, 2024, the staff report said.
The raises would have cost the county an extra $19,500 for fiscal year 2022-2023, and added another $142,200 to future budgets, the staff report said.
Staff designed the raise to align county supervisor salaries with the rest of the market, San Luis Obispo County Human Resources Department Director Tami Douglas-Schatz said at the Feb. 7 board meeting.
SLO County competes for employees in the same market as Santa Barbara County, Monterey County, Cal Poly and other employers, Douglas-Schatz said.
A compensation study showed that SLO County supervisors make 22% below the market median, she said.
They are paid $7,535 per month, compared to a median monthly salary of $9,659, Douglas-Schatz said.
The raise also would have kept supervisor salaries higher than their legislative assistants, the staff report said, noting that it’s “best practice” for supervisor salaries to be 25% higher than their legislative assistants.
“Department heads typically make 20% to 30% more than their assistants or deputy directors,” the staff report said. “A similar alignment should exist between board members and their subordinate Legislative Assistants.”
In 2013, supervisors’ annual salaries were about 13% more than their legislative assistants.
Now supervisors make only 5.4% more per year than their legislative assistants, and by 2024 their wages will be equal, Douglas-Schatz said at the meeting.
Supervisors haven’t accepted a pay raise in two years, the staff report said.
The board’s last wage increase was in May 2021, when the supervisors voted to bump their salary from $86,115.12 to $90,417.60, according to the staff report.
If the board voted to pass the salary increase, individual members could have declined the raise for the remainder of their term, according to the staff report.
SLO County residents urge board to decline wage hike
At the Feb. 7 meeting, a handful of San Luis Obispo County residents implored the board to decline the raise.
“We have high gasoline prices. We have high food prices. We’re going into a recession if we’re not there already,” SLO County resident Linda Quinlan said. “I just don’t understand how you could consider over a 20% increase. We respect the work that you do, I just think that’s out of line in these times.”
In previous meetings, Arnold and Peschong have echoed Quinlan’s concerns — noting that increasing wages isn’t the right use of the county budget in a challenging economy.
San Luis Obispo County’s Coalition of Labor and Agriculture (COLAB) originally supported the raise, agency representative Mike Brown said, noting that supervisors juggle board policy along with serving numerous committees.
“Every week you get a big pack of stuff to study, and the homework’s really important,” Brown said. “We’re not quibbling about the price here.”
According to Brown, COLAB is unhappy with some decisions made by the board’s new liberal majority, such as its move to remove Arnold, a conservative, from the Paso Robles Basin Cooperative Committee.
He suggested that the board postpone their raise.
“Since this blitzkrieg started, we have some reservations,” Brown said. “You need to exercise your authority as the representatives of the people.”
Paulding had a different reason for opposing the wage bump. As a newly elected supervisor, Paulding said he wants to build trust with his constituents — and voting for a raise for himself could erode that trust.
“The people of District 4 elected me to focus on the issues and tackle some big problems,” Paulding said. “I don’t think that they voted me in with the expectation that I would be increasing my salary from the get go.”
Speaking in support of the proposed pay raise, Gibson and Ortiz-Legg argued that competitive wages would make running for office more accessible.
“In order to have good governance and good folks running for office, it needs to be a living wage,” Ortiz-Legg said. “Yes, there’s hardship out there right now. There’s a lot of challenges that we’re faced with. There are a ton of people suffering, and that requires us to work extra hard, and devote our lives 24/7 to this job.”
She said that the current wage is not high enough to support, for example, a single mother paying for childcare.
“It’s making it so that only wealthy people can do this job,” Ortiz-Legg told The Tribune.
Gibson suggested that the board vote to pass the salary increase but agree to not accept the raise for the remainder of their terms. Paulding, Arnold and Peschong rejected this idea.
In some parts of California, county supervisor salaries are set at a percentage of state judge salaries, Ortiz-Legg told The Tribune.
When the judges get a raise, the supervisors automatically get a raise, too, she explained. That way, the board never has to vote on its own salary.
Ortiz-Legg suggested that staff investigate a similar system for SLO County supervisor salaries.
Her motion passed 3-2, with Arnold and Peschong dissenting.
This story was originally published February 9, 2023 at 10:00 AM.
