Prescription for an Ailing Budget: Reduce Salaries and Trim Management

A week ago, Patch asked readers to give their input on how they would deal with the $44 million budget deficit facing Sonoma County. Read the original story here.

More than 200 positions could be eliminated and up to 65 people laid off, according to the newly released 2010-11 Sonoma County budget. In addition, a slew of programs are on the chopping block, from community policing, to those helping the disabled, veterans and children, and another $1 million from Public Works. Read more details here.

After putting out our call, we got an earful from our readers. The overwhelming message? Force county employees to take a pay cut and trim management instead of passing the costs on to the most needy.

“As a retired county employee I know there is much waste,” wrote Patch reader Christine Oliver. “County managers get overly generous benefits while the line workers do the work. Eliminate the administrative positions from every department until they are down to five percent. Currently twenty percent of county employees are management. This is not sustainable.”

“There were over 200 Sonoma County employees with total compensation over $200,000 last year (salary plus benefits),” said John Hudson. “That seems like a pretty good place to start to me!”

Another reader, who only identified herself as Catherine, said that if teachers were being asked to work for less money, so could government employees. She also suggested taking away one floating holiday per person and shopping around to find the best prices on office materials.

Government officials often argue that they have to keep salaries high in order to compete with other municipalities and attract qualified staff. But our readers don’t appear to buy this logic, arguing that public employee salaries and benefits are frequently higher than those in the private sector.

“The current public employee salaries are way in excess of comparable work in the private sector,” wrote Vernon Simmons. “The defined benefit (regular monthly payments) enjoyed by the public employees have been long gone in the private sector, replaced with a lower cost IRA and/or K401 type of plan.”

And since our question also asked which programs should absolutely maintain current funding levels, several readers said that those assisting the elderly, handicapped and the poor should continue.

Patch has emailed a link to the story to both Sonoma County Administrator Veronica Ferguson and all five supervisors, asking them to comment. We have yet to hear back, but will let you know as soon as we do.