Commission Rejects Pay Increase Proposals

The Putnam County Commission won’t be seeing a pay increase after the government body rejected two proposals Tuesday night.

The commission voted 14-8 to reject one proposal that would have put commissioner pay at 4.6 percent of County Mayor Randy Porter’s $104,444 salary. Commissioners currently make $400 a month.

Cindy Adams said she doesn’t oppose a pay increase for commissioners, but couldn’t support tying the pay to the county mayor’s salary.

“I feel like if we have earned a pay increase, we should be required to explain it to the public,” Adams said. “We are accountable to our constituents and in order for us to be accountable we need to explain to them why we want a raise every time.”

The proposal would have kicked in September 1st, 2019 and automatically increased commissioner pay if Porter received a raise.

Commissioner Jonathan Williams said the commission hasn’t had a pay increase in 14 years.

“It’s important that this positions is compensated fairly enough so it always attracts good people who are interested in doing this job,” Williams said. “If we don’t build in some kind of mechanism to adjust for inflation, we end up going 14 years without ever adjusting it.”

Had the commission approved the motion, their pay would have gone from $400 a month to $400.37 a month based on the mayor’s salary.

The commission also rejected a proposals to increase their pay by $25 a meeting beginning next budget year. That proposal overwhelmingly failed with four yes votes and 18 no votes.

The planning committee had originally proposed to put commissioner pay at 5 percent of the county mayor’s salary.