Salary salvage is a slap in taxpayer faces

It’s time for Kootenai County to end the practice of “salary salvage,” and if other entities relying on taxpayer dollars are playing a similar game, stop now. There is no salvation from salary salvage.

In a Sunday front-page story, The Press detailed Commissioner Bill Brooks’ beef with County Clerk Jim Brannon’s handing out more than $32,000 in bonus checks to some of his employee. Had the bonuses been budgeted, nobody should have lifted an eyebrow. But these unplanned gifts were distributed just before the fiscal year struck midnight. The rationale: Those payroll dollars hadn’t been spent, so why not reward good employees with an unexpected pat on the back and a boost to the paycheck?

The problem should be obvious. Those funds belonged to the taxpaying citizens, not to Brannon or any other elected official or department head. If savings had been realized through turnover, poor budgeting or great fiscal management, it is the taxpaying citizens, not a handful of employees, who should have benefitted. When those who govern end up accidentally or intentionally saving taxpayers money, give it back to the rightful owners. Yes, it’s that simple.

This is not a criticism of the employees, who very well may have deserved bonuses. There’s a better way to do it than to burn the bucks just before the clock strikes 12. For example, why not include bonuses for your best workers during the normal budget process and pay them out within days of the new fiscal year beginning? That’s just good planning and would have had the same net effect to employees.

Commissioner Leslie Duncan makes sense when she suggests there’s a bigger issue here, that being employee compensation. While true, that doesn’t excuse the last-minute taxpayer dollar giveaway, nor does it address the serious misunderstanding or blatant noncompliance over who has the authority to spend those dollars. Precedent strongly suggests that the bonuses should have been approved or rejected by the commissioners, which reopens a whole separate but stinky can of worms. Kootenai County needs a clear and binding legal decision on who exactly holds the purse strings, because this salary salvage shenanigans is proof that such a policy is either not in place or it’s not enforced.

All of this raises more questions: Where else in local government is “salary salvage” occurring? How much more is being “disbursed” by other taxing entities just before a fiscal year expires, and what impact might there be if it was all returned to the taxpayers?

Let’s do away with salary salvage and find out.