There’s something wrong in Santa Cruz County. The county is desperately short on cash, with the general fund expected to slip below $369 million, departments across the board taking pay cuts and furloughs, workers being let off, public health clinics open fewer hours, and sheriff’s investigations on hold. Senior county executives, however, all received pay raises, some of them amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. The top-paid administrators in the county made, on average, 11 percent more in 2009 than they did in 2008.
What’s the logic behind that? Is it because they have to work longer hours to work the county out of the financial rut it’s in? Personnel officials say that they want the salary base to be competitive and in line with what people in similar positions earn elsewhere. The raises were initiated three years ago, before the financial meltdown, and are necessary to retain top talent. How unfortunate that the only people conscious of their abundant talent are the ones who claim to have it.
Republican Party activist Tim Morgan says , “This is not a time when these organizations should be increasing salaries.” Judy Doering Nielsen agrees. The former mayor of Watsonville and head of the Santa Cruz County Business Council says, “If we continue to give them the raises they think they deserve, and public services aren’t getting done, it means taxpayers just pay more for less.” She calls the raises “unconscionable.” Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
