On Monday, July 13th, the PR County Commissioners convened a meeting regarding the potential change to ¾ salary for the commissioner positions. A change to ¾ salary would essentially drop the yearly pay from $42,000 to around $32,000. The meeting was set up by Commissioner Lee Randall, who said that he’s been struggling with the idea of making full-time pay for what amounts around 25-30 hours of work per week.
The full time commissioner pay is also held by other PR County elected officials, of which there are ten in all. For the last two years, the commissioners have held off on a pay raise, which also affected the other elected officials.
A Montana statute also allows elected officials to take an additional add-on of $2000. The commissioners do not currently take the add-on.
Randall argued that dropping to ¾ time would be more commensurate with the amount of work done for the position; he also felt the constituents in the community would better support pay raises for elected officials over time if the commissioner position pay was reduced.
In discussion about the amount of potential pay decrease, Randall as well as Commissioners Rod Schaffer and Donna Giacometto thought that going to half time would be too much of a drop, as the responsibilities involved with the job were such that it might be difficult finding people to run for the positions if pay was not commensurate with the duties. Randall added that commissioners shouldn’t be in the position if all they are worried about is the money. All three agreed that they averaged around 25-30 hours a week performing commissioner duties.
Schaffer and Giacometto were not fully in favor of the change, and Randall tabled the decision until Tuesday to let the group mull the decision overnight.
At the Tuesday meeting, Randall made a motion to change the salary to 3/4 time, and the motion was not seconded. Thus the motion did not pass and the commissioners will stay at their current $42,000 a year salary.
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