If Chautauqua County’s Republicans were as fiscally responsible as they say they are, they’d immediately dismiss recommendations by the latest Salary Review Commission.

The commission has recommended increasing the county executive’s pay by 14.5%, the county clerk’s by 26.7%, the county sheriff’s by 10.3% and county legislators’ pay by 63.7%. The commission also recommended that the county legislator position should be included in the annual Consumer Price Increase as described in the Chautauqua County Charter and, if this round of raises is approved, to undergo a similar exercise in another four years.

Pay raises in general aren’t a problem, but these proposed raises are a problem.

In private enterprise, no one gets such large raises no matter how long it’s been since they had a raise. Taxpaying businesses would give raises gradually and hold off any raises if unforeseen financial issues arise. So, rather than give elected officials pay raises between 10% and 63% in one shot, county government should give any raises gradually. Increasing legislative pay by 63% is particularly difficult to fathom. At just base salary levels the commission proposes increasing legislative pay from $171,000 a year to $279,900 a year. In our view, a lower percentage – with money to fewer legislators – should be considered.

It’s also important to note the nine counties the Salary Review Commission used to base its pay rates for elected officials focused on population, but not the income of taxpaying residents. So while Broome, Jefferson, Niagara, Ontario, Oswego, Putnam, Rensselaer, Schenectady, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Thompkins, Ulster and Wayne counties may be about the same size; the economies of those counties are much different than ours. Census Bureau data shows Chautauqua County has the lowest median household income ($55,000) than any of the comparison counties. Broome County is the closest at $58,300, while Putnam County has a median household income of $121,200. On average, the nine comparison counties have an average median household income of $76,000 – which begs the question of how comparable those counties really are to Chautauqua County.

Commission members did scale back the proposed county salary levels in comparison to the other counties, but in our view didn’t go far enough to lessen the sticker shock that comes from raises between 10% and 26% at a time households in Chautauqua County aren’t seeing anything close to a similar pay increase this year. It’s the government equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses, but the Joneses both run Fortune 500 companies while Chautauqua County is running an entirely different sort of operation.

Rather than keeping up with similarly sized counties, Chautauqua County officials need to focus instead on government the lower-paid residents of Chautauqua County can afford.