Sunday • December 16, 2001

Putting county on notice for 2002

By Robin Miller/City Editor

Top managers in Solano County government received bonus checks this year. That much we know. How much, we don't know.

Neither do the people in charge of Solano's purse strings - or so they say.

A new program in county government eliminated auto and business allowances and instead increased base pay for top managers.

Under the new program, a performance review system was established. Non-elected department heads could receive a bonus equal to as much as 15 percent of their base pay, while their assistants could receive a bonus of as much as 10 percent of their base pay.

The idea is that extra pay would go only to those who do a good job.

Sounds simple enough, but as we've learned so many times before in conducting our Public Employee Salary Survey, nothing in government is simple.

In preparing for this year's survey, we sent letters out in October, explaining to every public agency we could find that we wanted to know the total compensation offered to our public servants - base pay, auto allowance, benefits, longevity pay, and, yes, bonuses. It's the public's money. We have a right to know.

Today is Dec. 16. Solano County still can't tell us exactly how much taxpayer money it handed out as bonuses to its top managers this year.

Their explanation is that it would require going through each manager's personnel file.

Interestingly, that is the exact same explanation we received last year for why the county couldn't tell us exactly how much longevity pay each of the top county government managers received.

This year, they provided the longevity pay numbers without any problem at all. That's because all of this information is in some computer somewhere - or at least it should be since we've paid plenty for those, too. Every dollar has to be accounted for in the county's annual budget. And given the salaries we pay these government financial controllers, they should be able to answer our questions completely - especially since they've had some seven weeks to figure it out.

Maybe we need to send our public information request letter to the county in July. Or better yet, since the county apparently needs more time than any other agency to find the information we've been requesting for 24 years, let's just put them on notice now. A complete reporting will be needed for The Reporter salary survey's silver anniversary.

• The author is city editor at The Reporter.