It's Your Money

We are often questioned as to why your Taxpayers’ Association spends so much time focused on the salaries and benefits paid to those that work under the authority of the Martin County Commission. We certainly acknowledge that there are many other issues negatively affecting our County’s taxpayers. However, until we can generate enough pressure on our elected officials to reduce these personnel costs, all other fiscal challenges to taxpayers will remain relatively minor by comparison. In addition, the inequities inherent in the County’s current compensation structure create many management and morale problems for what is rapidly becoming an overworked staff in lower level and/or non-union jobs.

John Daly, director of the University of South Florida’s Public Administration Program has conducted salary comparison studies for numerous Florida governments. The following excerpts from his data were released by the Tampa Tribune on December 28 th in an article critical of high government sector salaries. The figures certainly help illustrate and quantify how we view local fiscal problems.

• In Hillsborough County government, 27 people per 1,000make $100,000 a year or more, but the top earners are those that manage independent authorities that run the airport and port.
• Pinellas County government has 22 employees per 1,000 making six figures
• Among Pinellas cities, the ratio of six-figure earners was 18 per 1,000 in St. Petersburg, 16 per 1,000 in Largo and 9 per 1,000 in Clearwater.
• Pasco County has 11 per 1000.
• Polk County has 7 per 1,000.
• The cities of Tampa and Lakeland each have 22 employees per 1,000 making six figures.
• The giant state of Florida Personnel System, with 133,000 employees, has 20 employees per 1,000 making a six-figure salary.

We could continue with additional Florida county data from other sources, but the ratios are very similar – except in our County’s government. For FY 2009 Martin County had 91 of the approximately 875 individuals working directly for the Commission earn $100,000 or more – some much more - and with benefit packages equal or greater than other local governments. In direct comparison Martin County’s figures equate to 104 individuals per 1000 with a salary of six figures or more. This is almost 4 times greater than Hillsborough County, the highest ratio in the quoted study.

With this situation and the forecast for continued decreasing revenues in mind we respectfully put forward our recommendations for the Commissioner’s 2010 New Year resolutions:

• We will contract an outside professional to negotiate all union contracts as well as the personnel packages for all new, highly compensated salaried or contract employees.
• We will institute an immediate 10% cut in the total compensation (salary and/or benefits) for all highly paid personnel not covered by union contract.
• We will put the IAFF (Fire/Rescue Union) on notice to expect NO pay or COLA increases for 2010-2011 and significant belt tightening for senior/management personnel in coming contract negotiations.
• We will prioritize all expenditures before beginning the budget process to allow adequate funding of REQUIREMENTS before desires or pork projects.
• We vow not to try new “tricks" such as renaming or shifting taxes to assessments or fees.
• We will put all unfunded CIPs and restoration of reserves at the end of the line.
• We will STOP spending when current revenues run out and maintain existing reserves.

We hope our national, state and local economies will quickly recover and available revenues again increase. However, these type of actions should continue at all government levels as long as necessary to achieve economic parity between taxpayers and the public “servants” we’ve “hired” to provide our needed government services.