Compensation figures have DA David Roger rankled

By Joe Schoenmann

Sunday, June 19, 2011 | 2 a.m.

Another dispute is simmering between Clark County District Attorney David Roger and county management after salary and benefit figures for deputy district attorneys were published in the Las Vegas Sun.

What’s being disputed?

Roger sent a letter May 31 to Clark County commissioners and staff, calling erroneous the county’s position that prosecutor salaries and benefits have increased on average 15 percent from 2009 to 2011. The county’s figures took into account retirement contributions.

But Roger’s letter says he has done an analysis “based on actual dollars paid over the last three years.” From his tally, the total increase was $2.4 million. “This is less than half of the $5.5 million number announced in the media,” he wrote.

County management argued in April that if Roger had kept salary increases as low as the public defender’s office — which experienced a 1.6 percent salary decline over the same period — he would have saved almost enough to fill current vacancies in his department. How does Roger dispute that?

Even if he had saved $5.5 million, Roger said that wouldn’t have been enough to staff his office because “the cost of funding vacant positions in our office over that same three-year period was $6.93 million.”

You say that Roger and the county have been at odds before?

Commissioners were stunned in April when Roger refused to even entertain cutting his budget. At the time, all county agencies had been asked to find 9 percent cuts. But Roger said his attorneys were already overworked.

Commissioners have also asked Roger to work more closely with the public defender’s office to see if there is a way to cut down on expensive death penalty cases. About 80 death cases are pending in Clark County; that compares with about 40 in Riverside County, Calif., which has about the same population. Los Angeles County, five times our size, has 33 pending cases. A death penalty case is estimated to cost $250,000, while nondeath penalty murder cases cost about $40,000.

The $250,000 figure, however, does not include the cost of the appeals typically filed after convictions. Of 12 death penalty cases recently handled, only two resulted in death sentences, the county said.

So how will the county address the salaries/benefits dispute?

The county has hired an independent auditor to go over the figures to resolve the question.

Does that mean the county is pretty confident about its numbers?

That’s what it sounds like.

•••

About a month ago, the Clark County Fire Department fired a Laughlin firefighter for abuses connected to the use of sick leave. At the time, the county said more than a dozen firefighters would be disciplined.

I hear the first firefighter to be disciplined has appealed his firing. What happened with that?

The department gives each disciplined firefighter 10 days to file an appeal. In the case of Donald Munn, who was hired by the department in 1993, the 10 days had passed by the time the department announced his termination in mid-May.

Sources say the other firefighters to be disciplined will soon be informed, then given the 10 days. After that the information will be made available to the public.

Did the firefighter union appeal Munn’s termination?

Not according to county sources.