Common Sense

Commentor LDiablo alluded to the local controversy about the McLennan County Commissioners Court deciding to give themselves a big raise. They had already voted on giving all county workers a 3% cost-of-living increase, but their own pay hike is four times that.

The public outcry has been huge, and today, all but one commissioner decided to keep the 12% raise. The other will take just the 3%.

Less than a week after informally agreeing to the pay hike, three of the four commissioners voted today to formally up their pay by 11.8 percent, so that their pay will rise from $71,734 to $80,234.

Mashek’s pay will go up to $73,886.

Somehow, I don’t think it is a cost of living adjustment for them. So not only are they biased in favor of certain people’s dogs and closet racists, they are also greedy.

The only reason they decided to do this anyway was kind of a funny story.

Commissioners first took the step toward those pay hikes last week when the county judge, who had originally penciled in a 3 percent pay hike for commissioners, was away from the county courthouse tending his ailing wife. Commissioner Joe Mashek at the time said the occasion was ripe to discuss their pay because the Tribune-Herald was not in attendance.

And so, while almost all of the county’s 800 employees can expect a 3 percent cost-of-living pay increase in the coming fiscal year, commissioners Mashek, Wendall Crunk, Lester Gibson and Ray Meadows agreed last week to give themselves a raise of nearly 12 percent.

This morning, however, Mashek said he had experienced a change of heart about the pay hike and the way it was done. He told colleagues he would take no more of a pay raise than that percentage allotted county employees — that of 3 percent.

Yes, the perfect time is when you think the public won’t find out. Hooray for open government!

I think part of Mashek’s change of heart had to do with many of the political cartoons we’ve been running of him this week and today’s editorial.

The commissioners thought about doing the right thing at their meeting today. Not lowering their salaries, but raising others.

Commissioners briefly wrestled this morning over whether to raise the pay of other county employees. Plans discussed included Gibson’s suggestion most other county employees be given a 5 percent pay hike rather than 3 percent, while Mashek proposed a plan to hike the pay of most employees making less than $50,000 by 4 percent and most employees making more than $50,000 by 2 percent.

However, commissioners ultimately failed to resolve this part of the discussion and county employees will likely receive only a 3 percent pay hike.

Too bad, so sad for the rest of the county’s employees. If only they could raise their own salaries whenever they wanted…

As the Trib editorial says, this budget is not written in stone. It has to be approved by Judge Jim Lewis and requires public input first. I’m sure if enough people show up at 8 a.m. on Wednesday in the first-floor commissioners courtoom at the county courthouse, they might sing a different tune. Of course, I don’t know how many in the public are free to go to a hearing at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday.