[Shasta County] Supervisors, fix the politician bonus now

Blog note: This is an editorial in the Redding, CA, Record Searchlight referring to a Shasta County Grand Jury report. The report may be found at http://www.co.shasta.ca.us/docs/Grand_Jury/1516-reports/the-quarter-million-dollar-typo-words-matter.pdf?sfvrsn=2.

In 2008, somebody writing a Shasta County ordinance designed to reward longtime employees left out one important word.

And that mistake could end up costing taxpayers $260,000 by 2023. The supervisors should fix it immediately.

The ordinance approved at the time left out the word "appointed" in referring to the type of employees eligible to receive the bonus.

Nobody much paid attention to it until 2015, when county Treasurer Lori Scott talked with a longtime employee who asked her whether she was receiving the 5 percent annual bonus. She was not, and took her case to the supervisors.

She and Sheriff Tom Bosenko have served in various roles for the county, including in their current elected offices, that stretch across more than 30 years each. The board last year voted to give them the longevity bonuses — retroactive to 2015. Bosenko got $38,217, and Scott received $30,235.

Bosenko and Scott stand to receive a total of $99,112 and $78,411, respectively, for the bonus from 2009 to 2023. And if the law stands, more elected officials — the assessor, county clerk and Supervisor David Kehoe — could also get the bonuses if they continue to be re-elected.

Kehoe, however, says he would not take the bonus even if offered because "giving politicians a longevity bonus is the most egregious example of legislative wrongheadedness."

The Shasta County Grand Jury agrees in principle and calls on county supervisors to change the law.

The Grand Jury looked into the issue after Record Searchlight reporter Alayna Shulman wrote about the 2015 decision to grant the bonuses to elected officials.

In a recently issued report, the Grand Jury encourages the county to rewrite the ordinance to include the original missing word, "appointed." It would allow the current policy to remain in place through 2018 or until the elected officials' terms end, whichever comes first.

It also suggests the county better proof-read the ordinances it writes and approves.

We agree that the bonuses should not be given to elected officials. No other local governments do that, and the only reason Shasta County does is that someone made a mistake.

Voters have signaled their confidence in Scott and Bosenko by reelecting them. This isn't about their competence.

But that's the reward for elected officials — getting re-elected. They are not employees whom county officials need to encourage to stick around. County CEO Larry Lees has no say in whether Bosenko and Scott will be accepted by voters in future elections. Paying them bonuses should not encourage them to stay on the job one way or another.

All it does is hand over more taxpayer money to already sufficiently compensated elected officials.

Lees plans to take the Grand Jury report to the county Board of Supervisors in the coming weeks to discuss changing the law. Let's hope the board decides differently this time around. Last year, Kehoe and Leonard Moty voted to change the law while supervisors Pam Giacomini, Bill Schappell and Les Baugh voted to continue to give the bonuses.

Let's get it right and keep the bonuses for employees, not those who get their positions from voters — just as the ordinance originally was supposed to say.