Every so often our county gets a new government regulation from the feds or the state or some unelected bureaucrat, and we always blame them for raising taxes or costing us money. We complain that if only local government could be in charge we would make much better decisions.

County wages will increase in 2019 by $1,077,690. This includes cost of living adjustment (COLA) and the normal yearly wage increases (steps and lanes) set by our county wage table. You’d think that would be a very generous increase, considering county wages are paid by Freeborn County taxpayers, who are dealing with the farm economy and businesses leaving Albert Lea, as well as seniors on fixed incomes. 

Having served for 20 years on the county board, I’d thought I’d seen it all. But here’s a new one. Before the county board on Tuesday will be a proposal to increase the increase.

Here’s what happened. In March 2018 our administration asked the county board to do a study due to an “overdue need to evaluate and re-write job descriptions.” Would the study be done by our staff? Nope, government doesn’t work that way. They wanted a $30,000 consultant to do the study, which included a study for a new wage table. (I warned that Mower County did a similar study in 2017, which resulted in costing their county $500,000-$600,000 in 2018, and a proposed levy of 9.7 percent for 2019.) Here are the results: We will be asked to vote to accept the job descriptions, accept the new wage table and move all staff to it in 2019, adopt a 4 percent COLA, and enter into a maintenance agreement with the consultant firm for ongoing work. Increased cost for the wage increase? $578,458.00, a 53 percent increase!

I’m not against anyone making a living wage working for the county. This is America, so if staff are not happy with their wages, they have the freedom to decide what to do for a living, including working in the private sector or starting their own business. (We had a situation in the past where nurses could make more by working for Mayo Clinic Health System than for the county, so we raised nurse wages to stay competitive.) We don’t have to raise everyone’s wages to correct a situation in one area.

When the Albert Lea Tribune reported that our sheriff had requested a 22 percent increase I got more phone calls about that than anything else in recent years. A 53 percent increase on already increased wages makes the Sheriff’s request look conservative!

Dan Belshan

Glenville