Citizens panel reconvenes to consider salary hikes for Erie County politicians (2024)

Are Erie County’s elected leaders getting paid enough? That question will once again come before the Citizen’s Salary Review Commission that will meet on Friday in what will be a monthslong process.

The reconvening of this special committee is noteworthy because when the commission last came together in 2018, it put forth recommendations that resulted in substantive pay raises for the county executive, comptroller, sheriff and county clerk. Aside from recommending one-time pay hikes, which took effect on a staggered schedule based upon elections, the commission also tied all future annual raises to the Consumer Price Index.

Prior to that recommendation being adopted by the County Legislature in 2019, elected officials had gone without raises for 23 years. The decision to tie future pay increases to the consumer index was meant to bypass the type of political controversy that led to prior salary review recommendations winding up in the trash.

But with inflation and the Consumer Price Index growing sharply in recent years, those same elected leaders are now seeing bigger percentage pay hikes than the vast majority of employees who work for them.

County Executive Mark Poloncarz was the first beneficiary of the commission’s recommendations because he won re-election in the fall of 2019. When the New Year begins, his salary will have grown by $36,504 – a third more than what his salary was when the commission recommendations took effect. The county executive, comptroller, sheriff and clerk all received raises of 7% this year, and will receive 6.5% raises next year.

To be fair, however, the salaries of these elected leaders are still lower than those of many other county department heads, and far lower than their own top deputies. Until the Citizens Salary Review Commission’s recommendations were adopted in 2019, elected officials’ pay had gone unchanged since 1996.

Poloncarz, for instance, was earning $103,428 in 2019, before the commission’s recommendations went into effect. In January, his salary will grow to $139,932.

The deputy county executive, deputy comptroller and first deputy county clerk will all be paid $46,000 to $48,000 more than their elected bosses starting next month, even with the 6.5% raises for elected leaders. The sheriff, meanwhile, will technically make $69,000 less than his undersheriff, but will realistically see an even greater gap, since the undersheriff is eligible for stadium overtime pay.

Unlike elected officials, non-union appointees typically receive the same percentage pay and seniority raises as white-collar employees.

Although the Citizens Salary Review Commission is supposed to convene in every even numbered year under the county charter, it has never worked that way. Instead, the committee convened infrequently, when county officials felt the potential political fallout was lowest. And even then, recommendations were often rejected. When the commission recommended raises for county politicians in 2004 and 2014, they were deemed “dead on arrival” by legislators who pointed to the lagging local economy.

The last commission addressed this by recommending that raises be automatically tied to the consumer index. As a result, based on information pulled together by the Erie County budget office in preparation of Friday’s Citizens Salary Review Commission meeting, the comptroller’s salary is growing from $80,813 to $107,000, as of January, the sheriff’s from $79,092 to $101,811, and the county clerk’s from $79,092 to $90,129.

The only county elected officials to see no pay increase are Erie County legislators because the 2018 Citizens Salary Review Commission determined that their pay was actually 65% higher than that of county lawmakers in comparable counties. Neither one-time raises, or CPI-adjusted raises, were recommended. Legislators receive $42,588, plus stipends for the majority and minority leaders and chair.

Deputy Budget Director Mark Cornell said the county administration wants to stick with the county charter’s language calling for the committee to meet every two years. He said the committee did not reconvene in 2020 because that was the year the Covid-19 pandemic exploded. The committee also failed to convene in 2022 because of budget office staffing transitions, he said. No legislators requested that the commission reconvene, he said. However, legislators have been appointing new members this year.

The commission consists of nine appointees who “shall be representative of taxpayer, civic, labor, business, professional, financial and minority groups in the County of Erie.” Members are appointed for three-year terms. The county executive appoints five, the County Legislature majority caucus appoints two, the minority caucus appoints one, and the county comptroller appoints one. All seats are currently filled, except for the Republican minority caucus appointment because the appointee to that seat resigned.

The continued linking of elected officials’ salaries to the full Consumer Price Index may receive more attention, given the recent high rate of inflation and comments by some Republicans that elected leaders’ pay raise percentages were outstripping those of most other other county workers. Former Minority Leader Joseph Lorigo previously noted that if a Consumer Price Index provision existed when raises were last approved for elected leaders in 1996, the county executive would draw a salary of more than $180,000, far more than what the citizens panel recommended.