SPECIAL REPORT: ABC-7 sets out to understand reasoning for salary raises

For years, the El Paso County Court has been increasing the pay for county employees to improve recruitment and retention.

In less than two weeks, once the county’s budget is finalized, El Paso county commissioners salaries are going up from $62,680 to $89,250.

That’s a 42% increase.

The county judge’s salary will rise from $87,577 to $102,000. That’s a 17% increase.

County courts in Texas approve their own salaries.

ABC-7 set out to understand the reasoning behind the raises.

“A vast majority of people will not like it and I understand why,” said County Judge Veronica Escobar after the county announced the raises.

Escobar said she knew there would be backlash, but the decision had to be made.

“For the longest time, El Paso County, particularly the commissioners court, lagged behind not only other elected officials but other similar sized counties in the state of texas,” said Commissioner Vince Perez.

This Spring, the county hired “public sector personnel consultants” to evaluate the salaries of 11 positions, everything from the county attorney to the tax-assessor collector.

The goal was to compare those salaries to other large urban counties in Texas.

But when you look closely, 9 of the 10 counties picked for the study also happen to be the richest in the state.

They’re not just home to Dallas and San Antonio, but Plano and Sugarland.

There’s also Harris County, home to Houston, which brings in 10 times the tax revenue and has the highest paid county commissioners in the state.

If you take Harris County out of the study, with more than 4 million people and a budget in the billions, it drops the average salary for county commissioners and the judge by $5,000.

If you just go with counties with more than 500,000 people and less than 1.2 million, it limits it to about 6 of the 10 counties in the salary survey and it drops the average salary by $10,000.

Commissioner Perez responded by saying, “Again that is the difficulty. Are we going to find what is that perfect number? It’s difficult to say. Did we hit it right on the mark?”

He added, “I think whether it was $85,000 or $89,000, ultimately we’d still get the same reaction.”

Commissioner Perez said the new salaries would rank commissioners salaries 18th among all Texas counties and the judge’s salary would rank 20th.

ABC-7 then asked Perez why, if the pool of applicants for elected office is in El Paso, why compare their pay against other counties?

We asked, “In otherwords, if you are an elected official and El Paso is your home, then Travis County isn’t going to knock on your door and say ‘hey, come be an elected official here at Travis County.’ So, why use other counties as the market rate and not local businesses here in El Paso?”

Commissioner Perez replied, “that’s a very fair question. You’re exactly right and that’s what made this study difficult.”

He added, “the commissioners court in years prior, salaries for elected officials were set arbitrarily with no sort of objective criteria.”

The criteria used to determine the market rate was applied to all elected officials.

Consultants got the average salary for the position in those 10 large counties then the county aimed for 70% of that number when setting the salaries for county commissioners and the county fudge.

Commissioner Perez said that’s because El Paso’s per capita income and household income is lower than the rest of Texas.

So they decided 70% was a “reasonable level.”

“Some people have said ‘do you think you deserve this?’ This is not about me as an individual,” said Perez.

“Ultimately my decision was based on what’s the value of the work that this office and the individual who will come after me worked. What is the fair compensation for the work that should be put in?”

Commissioner Perez said their job is full-time and believes a comparative salary will help bring in a wider pool of candidates.

ABC-7 looked at a lot of numbers and many counties half the size of El Paso or smaller were paying their county officials more.

The budget will be finalized on October 3rd and, despite the raises, the county budget does not include a tax increase.

For more on the data on Texas counties, visit http://www.txcip.org/tac/census/index.php.