Greg Duke
The first formal vote about whether to raise the salaries of 218 Bartholomew County employees up to the average or middle-ground pay of those doing the same jobs in other counties failed Tuesday night, stalling on a tie.
Three members of the Bartholomew County Council, Mark Gorbett, Scott Bonnell and Jorge Morales, voted to increase the salaries of almost half of all county employees up to the external midpoint salaries outlined in a study by consultant Kent Irwin.
But council President Greg Duke, as well as members Evelyn Pence and Bill Lentz, voted against the proposal.
With council member Matt Miller absent, Tuesday’s 3-3 tie vote means the proposal is only stalled for the moment, Gorbett said.
“I don’t want employees thinking this is dead,” said Gorbett. “The council sometimes takes time to get the people to the water to drink it.”
However, if another vote is taken in May or June, it’s likely Miller will vote against the raises, Morales said. He based that statement on the fact that Miller initiated an intense verbal confrontation with Irwin when the study was initially presented to the council in late February.
The county, which employs more than 400 people, has already lost 22 employees so far this year. In 2021, the total was 70 employees. Irwin said administrators told him that “low employee pay is having a detrimental impact on their ability to hire and keep quality employees.”
The council set aside $1 million dollars to address this type of pay disparity last year. That’s more than enough to cover the $404,589 cost of implementing Irwin’s recommendations, county officials said.
But Lentz says he believes Irwin’s study shows several mistakes, so he “just want to see that the department heads are 100% on board with what this firm is thinking.”
While Duke also emphasized perceived mistakes, Irwin responded this week that questions and comments from elected and appointed administrators is “normal and expected after such studies.” Irwin’s memo also provides instructions on how the county auditor’s office can make requested adjustments after his recommended raises are adopted.
Chief Deputy Auditor Dalene Pattingill said she was willing to meet with county administrators on perceived mistakes in an effort to resolve any perceived confusion and report her findings to the council publicly next month.
In contrast, Duke recommended different council members be assigned to different department heads to discuss concerns in a private setting.
But Bartholomew County Recorder Tami Hines say department heads already provided written responses to Irwin’s reports. She also said that while Lentz and others have talked about having discussions with department heads, nobody from the council had made an effort to talk to her in the seven weeks since Irwin submitted his study.
“The point of the study is that (many) county employees work hard and they are underpaid,” Hines said. “This study, even with errors, has confirmed what you as a council have suspected. So I don’t understand when you have already put money aside why you want to continue to push this down.”
The effort to bring the salaries of underpaid workers to the midpoint levels recommended by Irwin is comparable to when the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department raised salaries to achieve parity with the Columbus Police Department, county Treasurer Barb Hackman said. Substantial salary increases were later approved for Information Technology staff and emergency dispatchers to stop an exodus of quality workers from leaving the county’s employment.
Hackman also said inflation and substantially higher insurance premiums have eaten away at this year’s 3% across-the-board employee raises.
“Employees are talking about this, and the morale of county employees is very low,” Hackman said. “Now, you have a study done by a professional consulting firm that works with over 70 Indiana counties and understands county government. Their bottom line is that our county employees are underpaid.”
While county Assessor Ginny Whipple says she doesn’t believe her staff is preparing to leave, there is always a danger that could happen – “particularly since they have certifications they can take to other places and make a heck of a lot more money,” Whipple said.
Although the assessor says long-time employees in her office are paid sufficiently,”others are grossly underpaid and some are at the bottom of the range where they should be,” the assessor said.
But on the other side of the issue, the strongest rhetoric against Irwin’s salary recommendations were made by Duke.
“I’m not willing to sign over my judgement to a contractor,” Duke said. “No matter how well intended, no matter how well researched, the point is, we (as the county council) have to make the decision.”
When Duke said he felt obliged to use his own best judgement and not sign off on Irwin’s salary study, his words elicited a strong response from Morales.
“Let’s understand something,” Morales said. “From the very beginning, you were against this. Now, I’m hearing you say you are not willing to accept a professional evaluation in favor of your gut feeling – even though, in the past, every department head has told us and we have been aware that our people have been underpaid.”
While Duke acknowledged a desire to take the politics and personalities out of decisions of who gets raises, he insisted the council should accept the responsibility of doing the work themselves.
“When someone comes up to me and complains that experts say he or she should be getting a raise, I’m not going to hide behind this study,” Duke said. “The experts aren’t sitting down here making these decisions. We have to live with our decisions. I’d rather live with my good judgement or mistakes, whatever it turns out to be.”
Morales replied, “I’d like to be able to understand how you are going to tell the employees who have been underpaid that we are able to make this decision against a professional recommendation that we asked and paid for. How are you going to reconcile that?” he asked Duke.
