The recent double-digit percentage pay raises the board of the Sacramento County Employees' Retirement System approved for its top executives underscore the fallacy of compensation surveys. Too often they are used to ratchet up government salaries to exorbitant levels, particularly for those in top-tier jobs.

It works like this:

If public agency X is paying its manager or superintendent or CEO 10 percent less than agency A, B and C, then agency X should bump up its pay rates, or so employees argue. Such surveys are supposed to help government agencies determine what compensation they need to offer to retain and recruit good workers.

But what if agency X is broke?

What if it is having difficulty paying its bills and is laying off workers?

What if we are in the middle of a recession and good people are available and qualified to do the work for a lot less than in the past? That's the position Sacramento County and a lot of other jurisdictions find themselves in today.

That, more than anything else, makes the 13 percent and 22 percent pay raises the Sacramento retirement system board offered the top officials so troubling.

There's also reason to question the validity of this particular survey. The 22 "comparable" retirement agencies the SCERS board used to justify increases included the California Public Employees' Retirement System, a fund almost 40 times richer than the fund SCERS staffers oversee, and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, 26 times bigger than SCERS.

Those are not comparable agencies.

In fairness, it's important to understand that county supervisors did not approve these raises. The majority of the 11-member SCERS board is elected by active and retired county workers.

Also, the money for the pay increases will be drawn from the county's retirement fund, not Sacramento's battered general fund. So sheriff's deputies will not be pulled off patrol to fund double-digit percentage pay hikes, nor will social workers at Child Protective Services be hit with higher workloads.

However, the raises will put a little more strain on the county's $6.1 billion retirement fund.

The fund is 87 percent funded, not bad as public retirement funds go. Still, it's almost $1 billion short of what is needed to cover all its liabilities. And the county's contribution has increased from $143 million five years ago to $166 million last year and is expected to go a lot higher as the massive stock market losses of 2008 are slowly absorbed.

Sacramento County began the fiscal year with a $90 million deficit. It has cut payroll by about 3,500 people over the last four years and reduced services dramatically.

More cuts will be needed to match expenditures with shrinking revenue. County supervisors have asked for sacrifices from top managers, rank-and-file employees and the public. It will have to ask for more to balance its budget.

It's difficult to persuade workers in one area of county government to sacrifice while already highly paid executives in another area of county government receive double-digit percentage raises.

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