City-county pay gap hard to justify

Most observers of the Sedgwick County Commission and Wichita City Council would be hard-pressed to explain why a seat on the commission should draw more in annual salary than a seat on the council — let alone nearly $50,000 more.

Or why each of five county commissioners should make more than the mayor of the state's largest city, $83,718 compared with $82,653.

Or, for that matter, why citizens wouldn't be better served and precious resources better used by one consolidated city-county government.

It's true that certain county departments report directly to the commission rather than to the county manager, while city departments report to the city manager. But both the county and the city have long had professional public administrators with responsibility for most day-to-day decisions, casting the elected officials in the appropriate role as policymakers.

Maybe if these elected officials actually punched in and out for a while, the reality would contradict the perception. But in terms of meetings, workshops, events in the community, travel, district and constituent services (and complaints), and weighty decisions, both panels appear to have similar obligations.

Why should the compensation be so different?

The possibility that Vice Mayor Jim Skelton and former City Council member Sharon Fearey will run for County Commission next year deserves to stir local debate on that question. But then so does the decision of Wichita school board member Betty Arnold to run for the commission.

For sheer numbers of hours worked and big decisions made in 2008, for example, neither the commission nor the council exceeded the school board, which ended mandated busing for desegregation, accepted the resignation of one superintendent and started searching for his successor, opened two new schools, and crafted and passed a $370 million school bond issue.

The school board also handles the largest of the three local governing boards' budgets — $621 million for the current year, compared with the city's nearly $500 million budget and the county's $383 million budget.

Yet state law dictates that school board members cannot receive any compensation from the districts where they serve, except for mileage and expenses, according to Mark Tallman, assistant executive director for advocacy of the Kansas Association of School Boards. That's not the case in some other states (in Florida, for example, some board members earn more than $40,000).

Of course, people shouldn't run for office for the money. Few do. As Fearey told The Eagle, "you do it to serve."

All of this makes for little more than interesting conversation at this point, given there is no chance that elected officials will give themselves raises in this economy. But the unlikelihood also offers an opening to talk about whether there are better ways to run these governments, or at least to pay those who run them.

— For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman