Editorial: Automatic pay raises are unfair to taxpayers
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There’s nothing like starting the new year with a hefty pay hike.
Sadly, that’s not something most Pennsylvanians will get to experience. It is, however, a benefit of being an elected official.
Much of the attention in recent weeks has been centered on state officials — namely the legislators who passed the law years ago that tied state and state-affiliated office paychecks to the cost of living. It affects people like the governor and judges as well, but they didn’t write or pass the law, and doing anything about it isn’t up to them.
The state isn’t the only place this happens, though. Welcome to Westmoreland County.
Like the state, the county’s pay structure — put in place more than 20 years ago — is tied to the U.S. Department of Labor’s consumer price index for the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey area. Because of this, commissioners and row officers are going to get a 7.8% boost in their wages.
This means Chairman Sean Kertes will make $95,616 and commissioners Doug Chew and Gina Cerilli Thrasher will pull in $92,210. This year, they got a 5.6% raise.
The increase applies to all row offices. The 400 nonunion employees have been approved for a 7.8% increase, as well. The union employees — 1,200 people who do things like keep the courthouse and Westmoreland Manor nursing home running — are locked into a 2% raise because of a four-year contract signed in 2020.
“We wish it was more, but, with our budgetary issues, that’s all we could do,” Kertes said when signing that contract two years ago.
Does the budgetary issue make a difference when elected officials are getting annual raises that double, triple or nearly quadruple that raise?
Whether at the state or county level, it is reprehensible for public servants to have their raises a foregone conclusion, completely removed from their hands by laws put in motion decades earlier.
Are the taxpayers who are funding these increases seeing their money rise the same way? No — the inflation fueling the cost-of-living adjustment proves that.
Leaders who care about the people they lead would make changes to these automatic pay hikes.