Editorial: Pay hike can’t pass smell test

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001 | 9:54 a.m.

The Boulder City Council's decision last year to grant council members a pay raise this June -- before Mayor Bob Ferraro and Councilmen Bryan Nix and Joe Hardy have to face voters again -- fits in the hard-to-believe category. What separates smart elected officials from mediocre ones is the deftness at dropping obviously dumb ideas once they're exposed. So far a majority of the Boulder City Council stubbornly refuses to concede that the pay hike was a bad idea that should be scuttled.

This insistence on sticking with the pay raise has been baffling, especially since it flies in the face of a longstanding practice among local, state and federal governments to require elected officials to run again before accepting a pay raise. The voters should have a say in deciding whether their representatives are deserving of the annual boost in their pay -- $5,000 for each councilman, $8,000 for the mayor -- a principle that obviously was lost on the City Council.

Naturally there has been opposition from Boulder City residents regarding the pay raise. Boulder City Councilman Bill Smith, the lone vote on the council against the pay raise, has proposed referendums on the April ballot to prevent the hike from going into effect this June. Now, in a belated response to the public unhappiness, the City Council is proposing an alternative initiative. Under this proposal, starting in 2003, City Council members could not receive a raise until they face the voters for re-election. Of course, the referendum would still allow the current pay raise to go into effect this June, a situation that is unacceptable. No matter how much they try to coat this initiative in chocolate or syrup, it still won't go down easy for Boulder City residents.

Hardy, who opposes the repeal of the pay raise, told Sun reporter Jeffrey Libby that Smith's initiatives are punitive. "My feeling is, (Smith's) referendum has to fail. It's not helping Boulder City as much as it's punishing the present council," Hardy said. What nonsense. This was a self-inflicted wound by the Boulder City Council. The members who voted for the pay raise have no one to blame but themselves for the predicament they are in now.

Ferraro himself was rebuked by the state Ethics Commission for failing to disclose that his $8,000 annual salary increase would enrich his state retirement package by $300 a month since those benefits are tied to an employee's salary. Luckily for Ferraro, who plans to retire at the end of this term, the Ethics Commission ruling didn't impose a fine or other penalty on him.

This isn't the first time an elected body has tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the public when justifying unseemly compensation benefits. For that matter, how elected officials in Nevada opt to set their compensation has stirred controversy. For instance, members of the 1989 Nevada Legislature tried to boost their pensions by 300 percent. Gov. Bob Miller vetoed the measure, but the Legislature overrode his veto. After a public outcry, they repealed the boost in a special session, but it wasn't enough to save many of their political hides at the next election. Apparently that pension grab was forgotten by Boulder City Council members.

Instead of trying to weasel their way out of this mess with their alternative petition, which is a hollow response, members of the Boulder City Council should have embraced the measure by Smith that would stop the pay hike before it goes into effect. It isn't easy to acknowledge that a mistake was made, but continuing the charade that all is fine won't enhance the reputation of the Boulder City Council. What's troubling isn't so much the pay raise itself, but how the council has been afraid to get the approval of the voters first.