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Garfield County has a small population but offers big pay packages to county commissioners

(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock talks with lawmakers during a meeting of the Senate Business and Labor Committee about HCR102 that seeks to reduce or modify the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The meeting was held in the Senate Building at the State Capitol in Salt Lake City, February 2, 2017.

Some residents in tiny Garfield County are looking askance at local elected leaders’ salaries and benefits and wondering if something isn’t seriously out of whack.

The county is the fifth smallest by population in the state but members of the county commission receive the ninth highest average total compensation of all 29 counties: $85,610 last year, according to Utah’s public finance website.

“There has been a lot of conversation about how it is that Garfield County reports that their commissioners make a lot more in salary than other neighboring county commissioners,” Sheridan Wilder, a consultant for a newly formed Garfield County Taxpayers Association, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

“The old adage is, ‘we get the government we deserve.’ I wonder if we are getting what we are paying for,” David Hensel, of Boulder, wrote in a letter to the editor.

Commissioner Jerry Taylor last year received $96,873 total compensation, $52,308 in benefits on top of his $44,565 salary, according to Utah’s public finance website. Commission Chairman Leland Pollock got $81,252, including $48,458 in salary and $32,794 in benefits. And David Tebbs’ compensation was $78,707, a salary of $44,241 with $34,466 in benefits.

(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Garfield’s commission payroll was far more generous than in most neighboring counties.

Kane County commissioners averaged $57,123 in total compensation; Beaver’s $53,244; Piute’s $40,821; and Wayne’s $31,188.

The exception was Iron County, Garfield’s neighbor to the west, where commissioners averaged $80,840 in compensation. Iron County’s population is 10 times the size of Garfield’s.

Of the group, only Wayne and Piute counties had fewer residents than Garfield’s 5,080: 2,690 and 1,445, respectively.

Lincoln Shurtz, director of government affairs at the Utah Association of Counties, said population size doesn’t necessarily correlate with salaries.

“Garfield County is home to a national park and has a whole tourism department, has a whole level of sophistication that is required because of some of the peculiarities, if you will, or the uniqueness of this community that other counties may not experience,” Shurtz said in an interview.

Tourism and land mass can “change the management dynamic that is required," he added.

Pollock, in testimony before the Legislature earlier this year, pointed out that county leaders aren’t just responsible for providing services for the few thousand permanent residents. “We’re taking care of millions of people in the summer,” he said.

That includes the occasional injured or stranded hiker that needs to be rescued.

A 2016-17 study by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah found Garfield was No. 2 in the state in its dependence on tourism, with nearly six in 10 jobs tied to it.

Little Daggett County ranked No. 1, with tourism and recreation accounting for a slightly larger share of jobs in the 980-resident county than in Garfield. Its commissioners pulled down an average $32,767 in salary and benefits.

Peg Smith, a member of the local taxpayers association who covers the county’s politics as a freelance writer for The Insider, a free weekly community newspaper for Garfield and Wayne counties, said Garfield commissioners’ pay package seems excessive.

“The comparison with Wayne, Iron and Kane counties is rather startling,” she told The Tribune. One of the reasons she joined the association was because “there is weird spending here that deserves a question and deserves someone to find out about it.”

Camille Moore, Garfield County clerk, defended county commission salaries and benefits as reasonable.

“I have access to the actual salaries [for various counties] and we are not that far off, we are about where we should be in my mind,” she said in a phone interview.

Moore said other counties may not be “giving you the full picture” in terms of the way they report benefits to the state’s public finance website. She said “through our organizations we can keep track of that and we make phone calls to verify salary information and see if we are on track.”

State law as of 2011 requires all counties to disclose salaries and benefits, along with other financial records on the transparency website. Accounting and financial reporting must comply with national standards and each county is audited yearly.

Pollock, reached for comment about his commission’s compensation compared with other counties, said he could not speak on behalf of all three commissioners. After consulting with the county clerk and his commission colleagues, he said: “We are looking into [the taxpayers association] concerns and will address them.”

Wilder said the association’s concerns go beyond compensation. It recently hand-delivered a letter to the commission requesting that it start allowing public comment during meetings.

Moore confirmed that the letter had been received and said the issue would be addressed in the next Commission meeting.

“We are trying to get them to understand that the public does want to have a say and be able to understand what is going on,” Wilder said.

The group also had concerns about legislation that Pollock championed during the recent legislative session that would mandate that small counties — Garfield included — stick to a three-member commission form of government rather than switch to a larger, multi-district council, as five Utah counties have done in recent years.

Before HB257 died on the last day of the session, sponsoring Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, said it was meant to protect small, rural counties against “hostile takeover” by environmentalists.

Pollock testified before a House committee that “We know that there are special interest groups that have their own desire to drive their agenda that we will never agree with.… I’m up here for the counties that need to stay the same.”

Pollock said he was looking out for the interests of the county, not pushing HB257 as a means of protecting his job or his income, which he indicated was not substantial.

“I’m not up here trying to look for job security by any means. You can look at what I get paid and see why I’m not up there trying to beg for a commission job,” he said.