Pictured are Frank Beach with the Chautauqua County Salary Review Commission and county Human Resources Director Debbie Makowski. P-J photo by Gregory Bacon

MAYVILLE — If you ask Frank Beach, Chautauqua County lawmakers are well overdue for a pay raise, which is why he’s supporting a proposal to increase their salary by more than 60%.

Beach, a registered Democrat from Dunkirk, is a member of the county’s bipartisan Salary Review Commission. He appeared at the county legislature meeting Wednesday to discuss the commission’s recommendations.

Beach was the only member to speak on behalf of the commission. Other commission members include Democrats Sharon Smead and Greg Krauza, and Republican members Steve Abdella, Frank “Jay” Gould, Vince Horrigan and Dan Heitzenrater. Smead was at the legislature meeting but stayed in the back during the discussion. None of the other commission members were present.

Beach had previously shared the commission’s recommendations at the legislature’s Administrative Services Committee the week before.

The Post-Journal and OBSERVER published an article about the Salary Review Commission’s recommendations before Wednesday’s legislature meeting, as well as an editorial, which is crafted by the newspapers’ editorial boards.

The editorial called the proposed pay raises “irresponsible.”

Beach immediately defended the commission’s proposal. “The legislators have not seen an increase in income from here in 22 years. To combat what was being told in the paper, I got a hold of the federal Bureau of Labor statistics and found out that the price for a newspaper from 2001 to ’23 has gone up 104%,” he said.

The last time there was a Salary Review Commission was 10 years ago, so Beach said their first recommendation is for there to be a Salary Review Commission every four years. He said this would help with not having such a large gap.

Beach denied saying the purpose of the next commission was to give additional raises. “Another thing the press seemed to exaggerate was the fact that they thought that ‘we want to give this massive increase now and that’s only half of it, and four years from now, they can get the rest.’ That’s not true,” he said.

However, during the first time Beach made the presentation, he stated, “(If you) have a commission once every four years, we could then expand and take what we believe is a valid recommendation now and pair that to additionally a little bit higher percentage in the next four years, and another four years, whatever, so that we’re taking it (pay increases) in smaller bites to get us where we really should be.”

On Wednesday, Beach noted future Salary Commissions may not recommend raises. “Basically, we think it’s valuable to have a commission meet once every four years to establish the situation at that time. They may not recommend anything, but it should be more frequently than randomly every decade or every 12 years or whatever,” he said.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Beach did not vocalize the specifics of the Salary Commission’s recommendations at Wednesday night’s meeting. The commission did, however, previously put together a memorandum, which was sent to the county Legislature Chairman Pierre Chagnon. The memorandum detailed the proposed raises.

The memorandum recommends the county executive’s pay increase from $111,420 to $127,630; the clerk’s pay increase from $66,853 to $84,733; the sheriff’s pay increase from $100,476 to $110,831; and legislator’s base pay increase from $9,000 to $14,732.

For legislators, they also recommended their pay be included in the annual Consumer Price Increase as described in the Chautauqua County Charter.

Commission members would like the pay rates to go into effect following each office’s next election.

To determine the amounts, Beach said they looked at counties that mirrored Chautauqua County, in terms of “population, size, that kind of stuff.” The counties used were Broome, Jefferson, Ontario, Oswego, Putnam, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Thompkins and Wayne. They took the average of those salaries, figured out the difference and cut the increase in half.

During Beach’s initial presentation, Legislator Susan Parker, D-Fredonia, questioned the counties used by the commission, saying some of them had a much higher home value or much lower poverty level than Chautauqua County.

Beach acknowledged that point during his presentation Wednesday. “There was a concern about one of the counties that we had used as being more south and a lot more affluent,” he said.

Because of this, Beach said re-figured the county executive salary by taking out the highest and lowest counties and essentially came up with the same figure.

CLERK, SHERIFF, EXECUTIVE

While Beach noted multiple times that legislators have not had a pay increase in 22 years, he did not address when the last time the county clerk, county sheriff or county executive pay was increased.

The Post-Journal/OBSERVER sent an email to Human Resources Director Debbie Makowski to see when those offices last had pay hikes.

She said the salaries for county clerk and county executive were increased in 1999 and 2002. “In 2018, the Legislative Body approved an annual increase tied to the CPI-U (Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers) which I’m sure you know can vary greatly year-after-year,” she wrote.

The salary for the sheriff has increased as well. “The County Sheriff salary was increased in 1999, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. As with the County Clerk and County Executive, the County Sheriff was included in the Legislative approval to provide an annual increase tied to the CPI-U,” Makowski wrote.

RESPONSE

Chagnon, who chairs the legislature, did not permit any comments or questions from any legislators following the presentation. No members of the public spoke out about it during the privilege of the floor sessions.

After the meeting, Chagnon was asked if he plans on bringing forth any votes on the proposals by the commission. He responded, “That’s going to depend on the membership. I’m going to talk to the membership and see if they’re interested. That’s not a decision that I’m going to make independently. Now that all the legislators heard the presentation, I’m going to take the time to speak to a number of them to see if there’s any appetite for bringing forth a resolution. It may be February, it may not be February,” he said.

On Thursday, Parker sent a statement to The Post-Journal and OBSERVER on behalf of the Democratic Caucus, which includes herself and fellow legislators Bob Bankoski and Marcus Buchanan of Dunkirk, and Fred Larson and Tom Nelson of Jamestown.

It states, “We appreciate the good, hard, work of the salary commission. At this time, we do not fully support their recommendations. We believe that additional considerations must be made for the median household and individual incomes, the cost of housing, number of people living in poverty, and the number of legislators in our county. We have to consider what our taxpayers can afford. We must take into consideration what our taxpayers pay year after year, after year. We are public servants and while everyone’s time is valuable, our pay needs to be in line with the wages of our every day working residents.”