Ending Wasteful Per Diem Meeting Pay for County Board Supervisors

As a reminder, I decided back in 2016 when I was first elected to refuse all per diem pay, a decision I still stand by and continue to follow.

In 2017, an ordinance change was proposed looking to end per diem pay for County Board Supervisors.  The resolution was amended by the Executive Board to also include a $600 per year reduction in County Board Supervisor salaries.  The effort failed by 2 votes.

During my re-election campaign, I promised to reintroduce that proposed ordinance.  After winning re-election, Chairman Kreifall and I discussed this.  We decided that our best chance for success was to move this forward as 2 separate ordinance changes, one ending per diem pay and the other reducing our own pay.  I will be keeping my promise, but just doing it in 2 stages instead of one.

Right now the meeting packet for the May Executive Committee meeting is being assembled, and unless there is a last minute change, there will be a proposed ordinance change.  That proposed ordinance would end per diem pay.  I am listed as an author on the proposed ordinance.  Assuming it again passes the Executive Committee, the entire board will vote on it at our June meeting. 

It will again require 2/3rds of all Supervisors to vote yes in order to pass.  This means it needs at least 18 yes votes.  Any combination of 9 no votes, abstentions, or Supervisors who are absent will defeat this proposed resolution.  Since it got 16 votes last time, I anticipate that it has a good chance of passing, but I expect a very close vote on this one.

With any luck, we will soon be done will per diems that incentivize government waste.  We don't want our pay system to encourage inefficiencies.  Since eligibility for per diem pay is based on the number of meetings attended, we don't want Supervisors holding unneeded meetings to increase their per diem pay.  Per diem pay increases if meetings go longer, so we want to prevent Supervisors from prolonging meetings to increase their per diem pay.  We want to keep government efficient, and eliminate unnecessary meetings that waste staff time.

Update:
The resolution did pass the executive committee, and will be moving to the full County Board at our June meeting.

The Washington County Daily News had and article about this in Saturday's (May 19) newspaper, but the seemed to have gotten confused on the issue.  Their headline was "Executive Committee votes to replace county supervisors’ per diem with monthly salary."  I don't know where they got the idea that we are adding to our salary in place of per diem pay, as we are certainly not.  The resolution that is being proposed, and has my name signed onto it, eliminates per diem pay and keeps Supervisor pay unchanged.  As I mentioned above, we plan to reduce Supervisor pay in a separate resolution that will be brought up later in the term.

Here is the language from the official minutes of the Executive Committee meeting:

Ordinance: Per Diem Compensation - County Board Compensation - (4.20) Moved by Mr. Bassill, seconded by Mr. McCune to approve an ordinance eliminating per diem compensation for County Board members, and forward to the County Board.  Motion carried with Ms. Deiss and Mr. Schleif voting no

You can read these minutes for yourself at 5/15/18 Executive Committee Minutes.  You can read the resolution for yourself at 5/15/18 Ordinance to eliminate per diem compensation

To be clear, there is absolutely no pay increase being proposed, and I would oppose any effort to increase our pay in place of per diem pay.