If I didn’t know better, I would swear that the Carbon and Schuylkill governments are in competition to see which is more chaotic.

Of course, the issues are quite different, but the bottom line tends to be the same when it comes to effectiveness.

In Schuylkill’s case, it’s how the county commissioners were handling (or more accurately not handling) complaints of sexual harassment, including specific allegations against embattled Commissioner George Halcovage Jr.

In Carbon’s case, it involved the commissioners’ unprecedented move of rolling back the approval of raises by the salary board to increase many employees’ salaries.

For example, two of its most valued department heads threw up their hands and resigned - Elections Director Lisa Dart, whose last day was Feb. 3, and Purchasing Director Rhonda Wenrich, whose resignation is effective Friday (Feb. 17) - shortly after the annual Salary Board meeting in January.

Considered one of the most competent election officials in the state, Dart, who admitted that she felt unappreciated, left to take the job of chief deputy clerk/deputy chief registrar in Lancaster County, a position which reportedly pays more than she was making in Carbon County with fewer responsibilities. Wenrich voiced a similar view, saying, “I no longer feel like I am a valued employee.”

The Carbon commissioners authorized a salary study among counties of Carbon’s size and have been trying to match job descriptions to salaries, but it’s been a bumpy road.

The three commissioners, County Controller Mark Sverchek (who recently announced his retirement after completing his term this year) and the row officer or President Judge sit as the salary board.

Earlier this year, the salary board approved by 3-2 votes the raising of a number of salaries but not all of them. A few weeks later, in the unprecedented move that I noted earlier, the commissioners voted down funding for any raises that were above what the commissioners had proposed in the new salary scale.

The salary board noted that an appeals process is being worked out and will most likely be discussed in March. This appeal will allow department heads to update job descriptions and have positions reviewed if they feel the employee should be at a different hourly rate on the pay scale.

The commissioners have many employees working for county departments and agencies who are below $15 an hour, which has become a sort of new normal for many employees across the economy today. In considering doing something about it, the commissioners considered how increases would have impacted county taxpayers in the form of real estate tax increases in 2023 and beyond.

To balance this year’s budget and keep taxes unchanged, the commissioners by a 2-1 vote, with Chairman Wayne Nothstein voting “no,” approved using $3.8 million in surplus funds to balance the budget. Nothstein had proposed a half-mill tax increase, which would have brought in close to $800,000, but commissioners Rocky Ahner and Chris Lukasevich didn’t go along with the idea.

Lukasevich said any tax increase would put the county’s 14,000 senior citizens and 7,100 residents living below the federal poverty level in even more of a bind than they are already.

One of the reasons the commissioners rejected the mid-year salary hikes involved its possible illegality. Lukasevich cited a case involving nearby Monroe County as a reason a mid-year increase couldn’t occur.

In the 1994 (Cadue v. Moore) case in Commonwealth Court, Monroe Commissioners James Cadue and Janet Weidensaul successfully argued that the third commissioner’s and the salary board’s approval of employee increases after the annual budget was adopted and in force would overdraw the budgeted amount for salaries necessitating the transfer of funds from the general account and possibly result in a real estate tax increase. The court’s opinion also noted that the commissioners, not the salary board, have the ultimate authority to set and adjust employees’ raises.

Carbon has about 300 full-time and 100 part-time employees. While the salaries for some positions are considered to be fair and competitive, it is those at the lower end of the pay scale that have become problematic as salaries in the private sector have been driven up by the need for more employees and competition among employers for workers.

The paradox is that once salaries are adjusted among lower paid employees, there is an expectation that there will be equal treatment and increases for those on higher rungs of the salary ladder. This is where government, which depends on public financing, finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place trying to be competitive while at the same time taking into account the ability of taxpayers to shoulder additional taxes to pay for the increases.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

(Note: Some background information for this column was provided by Staff Writer Amy Miller who covers the Carbon County Commissioners.)