The Cameron County Commissioners Court has already said it will give law enforcement employees, the sheriff and a handful of constables a 10 percent raise.
The Justices of the Peace are not scheduled to receive raises, but their staff will all get an added 5 percent.
And – even before the 2016 budget was voted on – commissioners voted to give both the district court and the three county court-at-law staff a 10 percent raise as well.
And what do the Public Works Dept. get?
So far, there has been no talk of raises for the people you see on the county roads clearing out bar ditches and picking up illegal litter so that the homes of their fellow county residents will not flood. Or, if they do flood, that they will not bear the flooding longer than they have to.
And what do they get in return?
While county administrator David Garcia has overseen several debacles involving Road Administrator Ruben Gonzalez such as not making his foremen use trench protection for exposed workers and constructing storm drains below the level of the road grade, he still remains the highest paid worker in the department. (see graphic)Garcia, who was put in his past position as asst. county administrator at $115,000 because former county judge Gilberto Hinojosa owed former U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz's assistant Lencho Rendon a favor, was actually getting paid an additional $70,000 from the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority until the heat got to much for the court.
They reached a Memorandum of Understanding with the CCRMA that the authority was to reimburse the county for any work that Garcia performed for them. But this was quickly offset when his boss Pete Sepulveda was appointed county judge to replace Carlos Cascos and Garcia was free and clear one more time.
Sepulveda, by the way, is making $230,000 annually, all paid by the CCRMA. By that measure, he is unaccountable to the commissioners who get paid about $48,000 each. What does he care? Anyway, they don;t pay his salary.
About the only ones who are raking it is are – as usual – the lawyers. The civil division county counsel was approved in 2015 to earn $122,000 and his colleague for litigation was approved for $106,044. The lawyer in charge of contracts for the commission raked in $84,000.
The county curt-at-law judges are making $151,000 each, the county auditor will now make about $110,000, the county clerk and district clerk another $81,000. The sheriff makes $96,000, less than the county administrator. The county auditor's salary is recommended by the district judges.
Down the road, at the District Attorney's Office, that budget is doing nicely, thank you. There are at least five Asst. DA's making more than $90,000 and two of them are making as much as the sheriff and one – Gus Garza – is making $9,000 more at $105,000.
Even four investigators, without a law degree, make between $58,000 and $87,000, far more than most elected officials in the majority of the departments.
DA Luis V. Saenz uses the department's forfeiture and Pre-Trial Diversion funds to augment the salaries of his favorite employees. He pays his staff $3.2 million from his budget, $389,000 from the Pre-Trial Diversion fund and another $285,000 from the forfeiture fund.
By contrast, the average county pubic works employee is making way below $40,000, if that. A glance at the Public Works (under $115,000-salary Garcia) indicates that the average equipment operator makes between $25,000-$35,000, with the $40,000 and up going to foremen and supervisors. Prominent among those are individuals who have lobbied hard for commissioners and helped them in their campaigns.
Last year's one-time $1,000 stipend for workers was offset by the appraisal district's valuations of their homes, which totally wiped it out.
This year, the folks from the Human Resources Dept. have already told them that their insurance co-pay will go up from $25 to $30 and that their annual health-care deductible will soar from $400 to $500.
A few of the workers, venting at a local watering hole, said that the county HR Dept. one more time under Hinjosa-administration's Carlos Villarreal seemed to be raising health insurance premiums to pay off the recent $22 million verdict against the county at Isla Blanca Park, the unjustified salaries of the county administrator and the continued perks for favored employees.
"They make like they are giving you something with one hand, and then they take it away with the other," said one. "Meanwhile, we continue working and making them look good."
4 comments:
You mention "pay raises" and county employees start to drool...the Pavlovian response. Everyone thinks they "deserve" a raise. In Cameron County we have county officials (as indicated in the article) that are making more than the key policy makers in the county. That's absurd. We still have "patronage" here and too many are getting a "free ride" because of "who they know" and not what they know. Unfortunately, the county commissioners will not do the right thing and cut some of those salaries.
Maybe we should bring back the GGL. Gary Thornburg used to keep them in line when he ran the Good Government League. Or maybe even bring Donald Trump down here pa ponerles el cyo en su lugar.
Digo yo...
First one to get cut should be Cris Valadez! Hijo de su pinche madre taking classes while on the clock, working whatever hours he wanted , on the blogs every day while on the taxpayers dime , pinche maricon backstabbing everyone . Time to let this idiot go; he's ripped off the taxpayers enough !
Does anyone know if their is a way to decrease Sepulveda and Garcia salary? How in the hell did they ever get that kind of salary?
I like the part where Sepulveda refuses to give the Law Enforcement a real pay raise. He should ride along with the Sheriff's Office one night and see what real work is. I can only imagine what they go thru especially down here on the border.
He says that he doesn't want to raise taxes to pay Law Enforcement better, but yet its okay for him to make a outrageous salary. That really is terrible!!!!!!
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