Commissioners Court Approves Pay Increase For Elected Officials

Despite tough times for some, county commissioners approved pay increases Monday not only for themselves, but for all county elected officials.

However, commissioners also made a move to return county elected officials in three categories to the same salary, allowing them to give increases to some with no tax increase.

Instead of just giving all elected officials a 2 percent cost of living increase, the first at the county in three years, commissioners first decided to equal out the salaries of all commissioners, justices of the peace and constables.

All four county commissioners will now make $60,855 a year. That’s a pay raise of $4,000 for most of them.

Meanwhile, the justices of the peace will earn $74,811 and constables an annual salary of $53,946.

Before voting 4-0 for the pay increases, commissioners debated for about a half hour over whether to add the two-percent to current salaries or an average of those salaries. Deciding on using an average for some positions resulted in bigger pay raises for some elected officials than others and even salary decreases in some cases.

For instance: Commissioner Willie Gandara, Jr., lost more than $600 of his salary. Justice of the Peace Barbara Perez saw an increase in her salary of more than $13,000.

Others of note include County Judge Veronica Escobar, who got a $2,500 raise to $81,600 a year, County Attorney JoAnn Bernal got a bump of more than $5,000 to $168,300 a year and Sheriff Richard Wiles will get a $4,600 salary increase to $150,576 a year.

“We’re in the best shape of any, I think, taxing entity in the county,” County Commissioner Dan Haggerty said after the vote to increase salaries. “Thomason is hurting, the school districts are hurting.”

Escobar said the aim is to retain talent, since it’s cheaper to do that in many cases than to train new people for jobs.

“It is a pay increase, but it’s a pay increase after two to three years of decreases,” Escobar said, “and not earning your original salary since 2007.”

Escobar pointed out that the county has lost a number of attorneys to the city, UTEP and Fort Bliss recently.

Escobar also pointed out that at $81,600 a year in salary, she is still making about $20,000 less a year in salary than former County Judge Anthony Cobos.