Finance Committee and citizens haggle over salaries

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Finance Com­mit­tee held a meet­ing on Feb. 28 to dis­cuss the salaries for the gov­ern­ment posi­tions that go into effect on June 1, 2013 (mayor, law direc­tor, audi­tor, trea­surer, coun­cil pres­i­dent, council-at-large and coun­cil ward). Com­mit­tee mem­bers Gail Baldinger and Cathy George were present, along with City Finance Direc­tor Paul Robinson.

[Matt Echelberry/media-credit] Finance Com­mit­tee chair Gail Baldinger (left) dis­cusses salaries for the new gov­ern­ment posi­tions with Com­mit­tee mem­ber Cathy George and Finance Direc­tor Paul Robinson.

At the begin­ning of the dis­cus­sion, Baldinger said he pre­vi­ously spoke to cur­rent Law Direc­tor Reese Mills, who said cur­rent city offi­cers who are run­ning in the May elec­tion should not vote on set­ting wages for the new posi­tions, which included three cur­rent mem­bers of City Coun­cil. Baldinger said Mills also advised that any­one run­ning unop­posed in the elec­tion should not be a part of the deci­sion mak­ing, only the dis­cus­sion. Baldinger added that the com­mit­tee will need to look fur­ther into the legal­ity of the issue.

Sev­eral of the Spe­cial Elec­tion can­di­dates were present for the meet­ing, includ­ing May­oral can­di­date Tom O’Leary, Audi­tor can­di­date Brian Treisch, Trea­surer can­di­date Paula Durbin and Coun­cil Pres­i­dent can­di­date Don Faulds. Also in atten­dance were some cur­rent depart­ment heads: Police Chief Brian Sater­field, Fire Chief Phil Jack­son, Elec­tric Depart­ment Super­vi­sor Mark Triplett and City Build­ing Inspec­tor Matt Ross.

Baldinger also indi­cated that there is cur­rently noth­ing in writ­ing for can­di­date qual­i­fi­ca­tions and not many guide­lines under Ohio Revised Code (which Galion will be gov­erned by begin­ning June 1). He said it would make it dif­fi­cult to come up with fair salaries for the new positions.

Accord­ing to Baldinger, the com­mit­tee would also need to decide what posi­tions would be full time and part time; when Galion was pre­vi­ously under a statu­tory form of gov­ern­ment, the mayor served part time and the service-safety direc­tor full time. Com­pli­cat­ing the mat­ter, Baldinger pointed out that, under Ohio Revised Code, the ser­vice direc­tor and the safety direc­tor need to ini­tially be sep­a­rate posi­tions, but may be com­bined later by a vote in a gen­eral election.

O’Leary inter­jected, say­ing that ORC does not detail part time or full time for any posi­tions. Baldinger argued that City Coun­cil will need to decide on that detail, which was met with debate from audi­ence members.

Baldinger main­tained that, ulti­mately, the City would need to fol­low state statutes and the cur­rent gov­ern­ment is lim­ited on its author­ity for deter­min­ing the details for the incom­ing positions.

When dis­cus­sion moved on to City Coun­cil mem­bers, George thought there were only seven coun­cil mem­bers under statu­tory government.

Faulds pointed out that Coun­cil Pres­i­dent is a sep­a­rate posi­tion, for a total of eight coun­cil mem­bers (the cur­rent Char­ter form of gov­ern­ment calls for seven mem­bers in total).

Baldinger agreed, adding that the Pres­i­dent does not vote, unless a Coun­cil mem­ber is absent and there is a tie vote.

Through­out the meet­ing, there were debates between the com­mit­tee and the audi­ence in regards to access to city finan­cials records and pub­lic records in gen­eral, and what was legal within Ohio Sun­shine Laws.

[/media-credit] Audi­ence mem­bers of the Finance Com­mit­tee meet­ing had sev­eral debates with Com­mit­tee members.

“In the spirit of a smooth tran­si­tion, ask Mr. Toy to instruct the finance direc­tor to open up the books so that peo­ple who are going to be audi­tor, trea­surer or mayor can have the same access to finan­cials as Coun­cil,” O’Leary requested.

“I don’t think that should be done until that per­son is voted in and bonded,” Baldinger replied.

Because no one present had copies of the Ohio Revised Code, Sun­shine Laws or the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, no one could say for sure what was applic­a­ble and what was not.

O’Leary pushed the issue, say­ing it would be help­ful if the pub­lic could look at year-end expen­di­tures and ven­dor histories.

George noted that the State Auditor’s web­site breaks down much of that infor­ma­tion for the City of Galion and could be accessed there.

Robin­son added that monthly expenses can be gen­er­ated at the Finance Depart­ment, but those want­ing those records must make a pub­lic records request at the City Munic­i­pal Building.

There seemed to be a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what specif­i­cally O’Leary was request­ing. He empha­sized that he was look­ing for monthly break­downs by depart­ment, which he said are “basic bud­get­ing tools” that “would help incom­ing office hold­ers hit the ground running.”

After exten­sive dis­cus­sion over pol­icy and legal con­fine­ments, O’Leary con­cluded: “So the short answer is: Fig­ure out the line items you want and make a pub­lic record request.”

Audi­ence mem­bers con­tin­ued to insist that incom­ing can­di­dates need base­line infor­ma­tion about city finan­cial records.

Baldinger and George empha­sized that they must oper­ate within the state and Sun­shine laws.

“Noth­ing I’ve asked for is in vio­la­tion of the Sun­shine Laws…Read the code,” O’Leary maintained.

In an effort to sim­plify the issue, Sater­field sug­gested that salaries for incom­ing City Coun­cil mem­bers are cur­rently estab­lished in the bud­get, at least through 2013. “You should be able to estab­lish that right off the bat, then if the next gov­ern­ment wants to change [Council’s salaries] for the next term they will be able to.”

Also, Treisch sug­gested the com­mit­tee check with com­pa­ra­ble com­mu­ni­ties in the area for what salary lev­els and pay struc­tures are, such as Bucyrus and Shelby.

At that point, Baldinger added that Belinda Miller, the city’s finan­cial super­vi­sor from the State Auditor’s office, would need to be con­sulted as well. “For a begin­ning point, I think we oughta present what was in place 25 years ago to her, to see how that would fit into the budget.”

Sev­eral audi­ence mem­bers dis­agreed with the notion.

O’Leary com­mented, “It’s fairly evi­dent that it’s designed to set [salaries] at a real low level as kind of a ‘we’ll show them’ way.”

“Those mak­ing the deci­sions were adamantly against the change [in gov­ern­ment], adamantly protested and voted no. You con­tinue to put out polit­i­cal and per­sonal hur­dles from achiev­ing a safe and easy tran­si­tion into a new form of gov­ern­ment,” accused Faulds.

Baldinger responded, “I’m only one vote out of seven mem­bers. So I per­son­ally can­not do what you’re accus­ing me of doing…I have a right, too, as a cit­i­zen of this community.”

Audi­ence mem­bers went on to indi­cate that the com­mit­tee mem­bers were ill-prepared that morning.

Treisch said that salary infor­ma­tion should have been researched before the meet­ing. He noted that the elec­tion was in Novem­ber and the vote was over­whelm­ingly in favor of the change.

“Infor­ma­tion is power,” O’Leary began. “The phi­los­o­phy about pub­lic infor­ma­tion is to make sure that all peo­ple who want to be involved have access to it.”

George argued they were not drag­ging their feet, but sim­ply bound by state law.

After the meet­ing Faulds summed up the audience’s frus­tra­tions: “Twelve indi­vid­u­als have said they want to move for­ward and work for the com­mu­nity, but they don’t even know what their posi­tions are going to pay and can­not get the infor­ma­tion that they need.”

The Finance Committee’s next meet­ing is for March 21 at 9 a.m.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Feb 28 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.