Raising salaries
or raising Cain

A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. Or is it?

It took just 52 seconds Monday night for Marion’s city council to introduce and approve an across-the-board 5% raise for all city employees.

The raise will end up costing the city quite a bit more than 5%. It also will increase various taxes and retirement benefits the city must pay. Factor those in, and a 5% raise balloons to 5.84% for most employees and to a whopping 6.62% for police officers covered under the state’s generous Police and Fire pension system.

Compare the employees’ raises with those received by typical city taxpayers on Social Security. Their benefits increased 2.5% this year, but unlike what happened with city employees, a portion of that raise went to pay for increased insurance premiums, reducing the average taxpayers’ raise to just 2.2%.

In the past 12 months, the cost of living has increased 2.4%. That means Social Security recipients now have less buying power while the people whose salaries they pay will have considerably more.

The raises aren’t because employees are doing their jobs better. Although in previous meetings, some council members wanted to give only 2.5% raises across the board and make any additional raises based on performance, the interim city administrator admitted that the city had no real system for evaluating whether individual employees did or didn’t deserve raises based on merit.

Not knowing who deserved a raise, the city decided to give everyone the same raise. Or did it? Across-the-board raises are inherently biased in favor of those who earn the most money.

Consider how many eggs a typical raise would buy. For a taxpayer on Social Security, this year’s raise might buy a dozen and a half a week. For a city employee earning $15 an hour, the raise approved Monday would buy more than four dozen each week. But for a city employee earning $100,000 a year, the raise would buy more than 14 dozen weekly, even if that worker might have to set aside part of that money for a cardiologist.

The 5% across-the-board raise floated through the city council Monday night because it repeatedly was billed as already having been approved in the city budget. Yet at a meeting a week ago, city officials admitted that there was almost no consideration of specific line items in the city budget for the last two years.

Not mentioned was a push two years ago to budget more than the city actually planned to spend so reserves could be built up. At the time, some on the council warned that money put in the budget would automatically be spent, not saved.

It’s telling that since then, there’s been no discussion among council members of setting aside any portion of budgeted amounts to increase reserves. The only refrain heard is that the money’s in the budget, so it can be spent.

Marion’s city council has made remarkable progress in some areas in recent years, but it continues to be reluctant to raise questions about the true cost of raises and equipment city employees want. At times it seems as if council members regard city employees as a special interest that can sway elections and therefore should get whatever they want, regardless of the impact on people who pay the bills.

Take it from someone who was a public employee for 26 years before “retiring” back to private employment: Private employees rarely get anywhere near the time off, raises, benefits, or other perks government workers enjoy. Rarely do private jobs attract employees away from government positions. Quite the reverse, private employers have to try — and usually fail — to keep up with the total package government workers receive.

A private employer would never give raises across-the-board merely because employees’ performance had not been evaluated. A private employer would not give automatic raises in any case. Raises would be based on profitability, and private employers can’t increase their revenue simply by deciding to raise taxes.

A bad year typically means bad raises. And sometimes that’s appropriate because a bad year can be caused by bad performance by employees.

Whether the 5% across-the-board raise approved Monday was warranted may be a debatable question. Wouldn’t it have been nice if it had received more than 52 seconds of discussion, which actually involved no discussion at all — simply a monologue by the city administrator followed immediately by a vote.

— ERIC MEYER