Not a good time for government raises

With the state's budget woes dominating headlines, it may have been easy to overlook what Carson City's supervisors did last week in giving themselves raises.

After a year of hand-wringing over sales-tax declines, cutting departmental budgets, freezing the city's contributions to community organizations and approving an increase in property taxes for the rest of us, the supervisors decided unanimously it was time to raise their own salaries.

Bad timing.

It's true there may never be a good time, as far as many taxpayers are concerned. They figure elected officials know what the salary is when they run for the office, so taxpayers don't want to hear complaints about low pay.

Nevertheless, we were generally in favor of increases for elected officials, but more on the order of 10 percent -- not the whoppers granted by the Legislature in AB23, which ranged from 26 percent up to 50 percent.

The argument was that local government officials hadn't had a raise in eight years, so they should get "catch up" raises covering the whole period. Only in government would somebody get away with that logic. It didn't do any good for the people who are now out of office, only the ones currently occupying the seats and those to follow.

Lest anyone think we are singling out Carson City supervisors, other elected officials around the state also got the raises. While sheriffs, district attorneys, clerks, treasurers and assessors got theirs in the legislation, county commissioners (or supervisors, in Carson City's case) were given the opportunity to vote for their own pay increases.

They could take up to 26.65 percent raises on their current pay, and Carson City's supervisors took it all. They went from $18,000 a year to $22,797.

Yes, it's still a paltry sum for what amounts to more than a 40-hour-a-week job. And they have many expenses for which they never get reimbursed.

But we would have preferred supervisors (and the Legislature, for that matter) bite off smaller chunks of the raises when times are tough, then do whatever catching up they think appropriate when the financial picture isn't so somber.