I knew before taking office that the position of Auditor had
deputies and managers reporting to it. I
knew the deputies were political appointees – meaning I could replace them upon
taking office – and I could set their salaries as long as I remained at or
below the cap set by the Iowa Code, i.e., 80% of my salary for two deputies and
75% for other deputies.
I discovered managers are treated differently. Although they report to me, their salaries
and benefits are determined by the Board of Supervisors. The biggest advantage of designating a
position as a manager is the ability to bypass the statutory limits for
deputies, i.e., the 80% caps or $67,564.30.
Last year, the Iowa Legislature decided to increase the respective
caps from 80% to 85% and from 75% to 80% for deputies in the Auditor’s,
Treasurer’s, and Recorder’s Offices; however, this did NOT affect the deputies
in the Sheriff’s or County
Attorney’s Offices as the
Legislature increased their caps years ago.
In my opinion, the trend in county government is to decrease
the number of deputies and increase the number of managers even though a deputy
converted to a manager may be doing the exact same work as he/she did as a
deputy. It's possible the only difference is that someone took the deputy’s job description and titled it “manager”.
I remember a discussion vintage 1988 at Teleconnect when I
was working on a compensation committee reviewing every job description in the
company. At one point, the HR Director
declared, “if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, you can call it
whatever you want, but it’s still a duck”.
I challenge anyone to name a private sector firm in the
State of Iowa
that has ever frozen the salaries of one group of employees and not frozen the
salaries of the remaining employees.
Please provide a contact name and phone number as I will call them to
confirm. And I will print their name in
my blog – assuming it won’t get them sued.
If you’re going to freeze the salaries of one group of
“ducks”, then you should be freezing the salaries of the other “ducks”. Fair is fair! --Joel @ 7:00pm