Reviewing the Data of Executive Staff Compensation

Is the fox guarding the Nevada County Hen House?

Having reviewed the Salary Comparisons by County spreadsheet and the many comments concerning county executive compensation, I was struck by a particular comment from Hardy Bullock who said the following: “I have personally reviewed executive compensation as part of the annual budget process. This involves evaluating performance, longevity, and the detailed job description. Within our eight comparison counties (Butte, El Dorado, Mendocino, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba), our CEO compensation is fair, competitive, and consistent with the average CEO salary”.

It's difficult to see how his conclusion follows from the data. It’s just not true that Nevada County CEO compensation is consistent with the average CEO salary of the eight counties mentioned. Alison’s salary is almost $100,000 per year more than the average of those counties, even considering that the County has chosen to include Sacramento County, with 15 times larger population and a $7.3 billion budget. Removing Sacramento, Alison, with $430,800/yr. is by far the highest compensated CEO of seven counties, five of which have significantly larger population. Comparing the data, her salary seems out of whack.

Recent comments by Heidi Hall are also not believable, “Before any salary is created or raises happen, we do a comparative study with eight other counties, like ours in a rural area, to make sure that we’re within a market range”. And during the League of Women Voters forum, “County staff deserve their current salaries and could make twice as much”. (My italics both places).

I remind all readers that in private companies the CEO must achieve greater revenue than expenses, a process that requires skill on both sides of the equation. Looking at the adopted budgets for the last six years expenses have exceeded revenue. The county’s own projection shows the general fund declining by 10 million dollars over the next five years.

It’s also a crutch that the County relies heavily on grants for projects, rather than having to prioritize and scrub budgets to meet key objectives. If you don’t get the grant, it’s simple…you don’t do the project. Senior staff employees are likely ill- suited to the demands of the real-world private sector.

Further, good boards of directors will require clear and “knife-edge” objectives, with no ambiguity about whether these have been achieved. If the county has such objectives, they should be made clear in advance, and not of the fuzzy form “improve this, do good here, etc.”.

The reader can assess personally whether the county has successfully dealt with homelessness, housing, and fire prevention, for example. Remember Measure V? If you don’t get the funds, there is no need to go back and figure out how to do a project critical to our survival...just keep building libraries and playgrounds because it’s in the budget. That would never work in the private sector.

As Jake Bronson of Nevada City said, when he recommended a Citizen’s Oversight Committee, “If we are paying a premium for our executive employees, I would expect premium results. If we fail to provide adequate services and our executive compensation is excessive, we need change. Our supervisors need to respond”.

Curt Brown Nevada City

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Curt Brown is a retired electrical engineer and graduate of UC Davis BSEE '69 and MIT MSEE '70. During his long career, he has served as VP of R&D for a number of leading technology companies and has been awarded patents in data storage, internet communications, and nuclear fusion.  Currently, he is working with physicists and a small engineering team in the development of a deuterium fusion engine. Curt lives in Nevada City

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