Determining if Mesa County employees received pay raises proves difficult

The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction): Human resources officials with the county said there is no easy way to tell how many of the county’s employees received raises during the period of time County Commissioner Rose Pugliese referred to in her Dec. 12 comments, and said the software used by the county is antiquated and makes accessing employee records complicated.

Complications include high turnover, re-classification of jobs and positions, and mobility of employees as additional obstacles to understanding how many employees received raises over the time period.

A review of the employee salaries in the fleet management department Johnny McCarty worked in shows that compensation has been erratic at times since 2006, with no upward trend among staff or supervisors.

A slight increase in 2009 is evident in some salaries, possibly a result of the 3 percent merit increase budgeted after a salary study compared county compensation to the current market at the time, though a pay-rate freeze was instituted the same year.

It is unclear whether other county departments had similar employee compensation patterns or had “significant raises” during the time Pugliese referred to in her comments.

The Daily Sentinel filed a Colorado Open Records Act request and paid $90 for information on the fleet management department’s salaries, which has had lower turnover than the rest of the county departments, according to Senior Human Resources Analyst Krista Ubersox.

She said, overall, the county has at least 20 percent turnover in employees each year.

The compensation study McCarty referred to — which has cost taxpayers $33,595 according to County Administrator Frank Whidden — is a sore spot with other county employees.

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