Salary board approves pay equity adjustment
The Fayette County salary board Wednesday approved a plan proposed by the county’s human resource director to adjust the salaries of department directors and chief deputies beginning in 2014.
Dominick Carnicella, human resource director through Felice Associates of Greensburg, said that in an effort to bring the salaries of the department heads into line with one another he examined and reviewed the salaries and calculated adjustments to each.
Overall, Carnicella told the board that that the adjustment will amount to a 3 to 4 percent average increase, outside of annual salary increases for those positions.
After discussing each position and the proposed adjustments, the board voted 3 to 1 to approve the plan, with county Commissioner Angela Zimmerlink casting the lone dissenting vote.
County commissioners Al Ambrosini, Vincent Zapotosky and Zimmerlink, along with county Controller Sean Lally, comprise the main body of the board. Individual department directors become voting members of the board when their office staff is under consideration for a raise, staffing reclassification or the creation of a new position within the department.
As such, Zapotosky said following the vote that each individual department will now work within the parameters set by the adjustments adopted by the board to budget the additional money for the 2014 county spending plan.
He said that at the time of the adoption of the budget, each row officer will then have the opportunity to cast a vote regarding the pay increases for their specific office.
The pay increases would bring the salaries for all department heads to a range of $40,800 to $61,984, with both the director of Veterans Affairs and the director of Planning and Zoning set to make $40,800 and the director of the county’s Emergency Management Agency set to earn $61,984.
The salary range for the department heads currently ranges from $39,300 to $56,430.
Other department heads set to see a pay increase under the plan include the Election Bureau, the county 911 coordinator, the prison warden and deputy warden, the business manager at the prison and the director of Fayette Area Coordinated Transport.
Additionally, Carnicella said that under the proposed pay rate equity adjustment, six chief deputy positions in six county departments would see pay increases including clerk of courts, prothonotary, recorder of deeds, recorder of wills, treasurer and the sheriff’s department.
Sheriff Gary Brownfield also told the board that Carnicella had failed to examine the salary and potential increase due to the chief deputy of courthouse security.
Zapotosky said that the review and adjustments are an effort to “try and catch up with modern day salaries to pay our people the best that we can.”
Zimmerlink voted against the measure for several reasons, specifically noting that row officers should have taken individual votes in each proposed salary increase and because she was displeased with Carnicella’s presentation. Zimmerlink said that he did not provide information on the proposal to any board members prior to the meeting, did not discuss any of his findings with any of the department heads and failed, in some cases, to even provide concrete figures as to the pay increases being proposed.
“It would be nice to review this and see how Felice and Associates came up with this,” Zimmerlink said, noting that the decision warranted more than five minutes of discussion.