Cost of Living Adjustment for Constitutional Officers

I helped author a resolution to provide our County Clerk a Cost of Living Adjustment and salary adjustment. The Board by statute sets these salaries every four and we set this prior to the start of a term so we had an April 2nd deadline.

We provided our Clerk the exact same salary adjustment that all County employees received in the last 4 years and it passed with overwhelming support (30-6).

Our election officials are under constant attack. That attack can be threats, discrediting the elections process, infrastructure attacks to name a few. The job has become enormously more complex over the last 4 years and it will only get harder going forward. While I believe our clerk deserve more compensation than being 131st highest paid employee in the County, I also think the reasonable compromise proposed by Board Chair Patrick Miles was sensible and lead to a broad consensus. That is a testament to his leadership as he guides through many of these tough issues day in and day out and never seeks credit or the limelight.

I want to thank our County Clerk Scott McDonnell for the tremendous job he does for not only Dane County but for Wisconsin and the country. He is in some cases our last line of defense for democracy.

I also want to thank retiring Supervisors Dave Ripp and Tim Keifer. We often have different viewpoints as evidenced in the initial discussion around this issue but we worked together as a team to get this done.

The discussion around County Executive compensation has been sent back to the Personnel and Finance Committee for a deeper analysis. I am not sure what that compensation should be but it is peculiar to have essentially a chief executive be the 68th highest paid employees and make 40k less than their chief of staff.

Below is an interview I did with WKOW prior to the meeting.

On a personal note, I am mentally and physically exhausted but eternally grateful to represent what I consider to be the best district in Dane County.