Sacramento supervisors say process giving themselves raises was ‘consistent’ despite math error

In a formal response this week, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors largely disagreed with findings and recommendations from a grand jury report released in June that said the elected leaders failed to provide transparency when orchestrating a pay raise for themselves in 2023.

According to the grand jury report, board members approved a 36% salary increase that was voted on and passed through the consent calendar, which is typically reserved for agenda items that are not controversial. A county executive team and a third-party consultant recommended a 20% salary increase for supervisors; that’s the figure the public was aware of.

The grand jury report called out the process and referred to it as “lack of formal procedures or just sloppy work.” Its findings, as the supervisors’ response summarized it, included “that financial mistakes were not directly reported to the Board, which resulted in misinformation; that discussions related to board compensation should be decided with public participation and input; that the use of the consent calendar was not unlawful but not transparent enough; and that the effective date of the salary increase raises questions about its validity and deprives residents of their rights.”

To rectify the action, the grand jury report recommended the supervisors provide an explanation of financial mistakes in an open session, create formal procedures for correcting such flaws, limit the use of the consent calendar for non-controversial items, create a citizen-based compensation commission, and evaluate the impacts and remedies related to the salary increase, including potential return of funds to the county.

County supervisors mostly disagreed with the grand jury report’s findings and recommendations.

“I thank the grand jury for having discovered some of these things,” Supervisor Pat Hume said during their Tuesday board meeting. “They made some findings that we disagreed with either wholly or partially relative to the process. I think everything that we did was consistent with how we had done other similar processes with the county.”

Hume added: “I found some things that we absolutely did wrong, which (resulted) in all of us paying back the county for a portion of the increase. I think when you know better, you do better, and in 30 some odd years, if this is ever addressed again, the county will get it right that time.”

In the supervisors’ response to the five findings, they agreed with one finding, disagreeing wholly with another and disagreed partially with the other three.

The supervisors fully agreed that decisions relating to compensation for the supervisors should be decided with public participation and input. However, supervisors disagreed with the notion that financial mistakes were not reported to the supervisors directly, leaving them and the public misinformed.

“Although there was an error in projected costs, the County was transparent in its methodology using a direct relationship between the Board of Supervisor salaries and the Superior Court Judge salaries,” the supervisor’s response said. “This methodology and increase was consistent with the consultant’s recommendation and other jurisdictions surveyed as part of the study. The recommended 20% increase for Board of Supervisor salaries was a direct relationship to the Superior Court Judges salary and this relationship was clearly stated in both the Board Letter and the associated Ordinance.”

County supervisors agreed that their use of the consent calendar was not unlawful but disagreed that the process lacked transparency because, the supervisors contended, putting salary approval on the consent agenda is consistent with the county’s historical practice for compensation of other employees.

Grand jury foreperson Steve Caruso said in June that county staff “acknowledged that it was a mistake to tuck the salary increase proposal in the middle of the consent calendar.”

“We also hold the supervisors accountable because they had the authority to take the proposal off the consent calendar to encourage more public discussion, but they made a conscious decision not to,” Caruso said.

The supervisors, however, argued in the written response that the placement of an item on the consent agenda does not limit the public’s ability to provide input in the legislative process, which includes their right to make a public comment on any agenda item — including consent items — in person, in writing or by phone.

Although it is standard practice to remove consent agenda items for discussion, clarification, or if potentially controversial, supervisors said that they had a discussion on their salary increase during a board meeting on April 18, 2023.

Regarding the deprivation of residents rights, county supervisors disagree “wholly” with that finding, a county report said, as the Registrar of Voters received no protest petition either within 30 or 60 days of the board approving the raise. If a citizen did protest the raise, according to the county report, the agenda item would have been suspended and the board would have to reconsider the approval.

However, the grand jury argued that the reason there wasn’t public protest is because the process lacked transparency and the public wasn’t aware of it in the first place.

The supervisors said they would follow two of the grand jury’s recommendations: to explain how the financial mistakes occurred, which they argue they did in their response as well as within the county’s revised budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year released last September; and to calculate the amount overpaid and to implement “a plan to recoup the overpayment.”

The supervisors said the Department of Personnel Services and county counsel led this effort on the plan to recoup and that it would be communicated publicly by Nov. 1 as requested by the grand jury. The details of the plan weren’t immediately clear.

County supervisors reported that they will not implement any of the remaining grand jury recommendations because they are not justified or there are already measures in place addressing their suggestions. Those recommendations included creating a formal procedure to “limit the use the consent calendar to only non-controversial matters” and to create a “citizen-based compensation commission” to oversee raise processes.

The Board of Supervisors discussed the grand jury response for about two minutes during Tuesday’s meeting. They then unanimously passed it, 4-0, with Supervisor Phil Serna absent.