The county council adopted a $40 million general spending budget for 2023, including raises for all county employees and adjustments for inflation.
The Johnson County general fund budget is up roughly 4% from this year’s $38.3 million budget approved in 2021.
The increase comes from a few areas. One is all county employees receiving a minimum of a 4% salary increase. A few adjustments were also made in different departments to account cost increases for inflation, said Jim Ison, Johnson County Council president.
The county will also take in an additional $4 million in income tax collections next year because of a recently approved .2% Economic Development Income Tax, or EDIT, increase.
The Johnson County Council gave final approval to the 2023 budget by a unanimous vote on Monday. Council member Pete Ketchum was absent from the meeting.
Another salary increase, concerns with inflation
This 4% raise for county employees is the second raise approved in the last year. The council also approved a 4% raise for this year’s budget, based on a salary study conducted last year.
A second salary study was done for the 2023 budget, and the county used a formula to determine the amount the raise should be, based on an external midpoint from the study.
The county created a formula to compare the external midpoint salary from the salary study to Johnson County employee salaries. The formula took the difference, between the two salaries and divided it by two. The dollar amount that came out of the formula — which varied based on the salary — was added to the current salary, and then an additional 4% was placed on that.
Raises ranged from around $1,500 on average, to the $5,000 limit the council set.
Most departments received the base 4% raise on top of the formula calculation, while some received as high as a 7%. Most employees of the sheriff’s office and the highway department received 7% raises because retention is an issue.
County officials have recognized for a while that employee pay is an issue, and it factors into retention, Ison said. It’s been a priority for the council since 2019 to raise salaries to make pay more competitive with other local governments.
“It does really factor into retention,” Ison said. “If you have a clerk in one of the county offices versus a clerk and one of the municipalities, like Greenwood, and there’s a $5,000 to $7,000 pay disparity, when a job opens at Greenwood, that clerk jump ships.”
The county council and commissioners also approved in August spending of federal American Rescue Plan pandemic relief dollars to pay all county employees a one-time retention stipend.
Elected county council members also received the raise, adding 4% or around $400 to their previous salaries of $10,000. The three members of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners received a roughly 9% raise, which increased their salaries from $36,000 to $39,600.
Inflation also affected the budget, Ison said. Rather than increasing the budget a flat amount for inflation, the council heard from the departments about how their costs were increasing and made adjustments accordingly.
“We absolutely did. I mean, it’s a reality that we’re living in right now,” Ison said.
For example, the sheriff’s office received a substantial increase because of the rising cost to provide food for inmates, Ison said. Fuel budgets also increased, as gas is expected to hover around $4 a gallon next year. The highway department fuel budget increased by 10% to $220,000 for next year.
Prosecutor funds slashed
Johnson County Prosecutor Joe Villanueva cut around $168,000 from two funds in the prosecutor office budget for 2023 — the highest cuts from any other county department budget.
Villanueva lost his re-election bid in the May Republican primary election. He will not be the prosecutor in 2023, however, he still sets the budget for the next year, as he holds the office until January 2023.
Initially, he cut most of the $168,000 from the prosecutor deferral and pretrial diversion funds, which do not come out of the county general funds. Many of the cuts were made to line items labeled for office supplies, witness fees, maintenance, books, education, and travel and training.
Other than those two funds, the general fund in the budget increased, and accounted for pay raises.
When presenting his budget to the council on Sept. 8 Villanueva said “pretty decent cuts” were made because he reviewed the prosecutor budget and determined these funds were not needed.
“These are cuts that we looked at in a bit of a deeper dive that would not have an adverse impact on daily operations,” Villanueva said at the hearing.
Villanueva was then asked by council members if he had discussed the budget cuts with the incoming prosecutor, Lance Hamner. He then said he was not contacted by Hamner about the budget.
He again said he did not believe any of the cuts would negatively affect Hamner running the prosecutor’s office.
“I know one of the campaign promises the incoming elected prosecutor campaigned on was we had a bloated budget. He was going to cut $100,000,” Villanueva said.
Council member Melinda Griesemer voiced concern, saying she did not want to leave the next prosecutor “with nothing,” if he did not give input on the reductions.
“I don’t want to leave him with nothing and have him coming back asking for money,” she said at the hearing on Sept. 8.
At the following second hearing on Sept. 15, council members informed Villanueva that Hamner reached out to them following the Sept. 8 hearing, asking the council not to cut the budgets for those funds.
Council member Ketchum said on Sept. 15 that he would vote against these prosecutor funds because the cuts were made against Hamner’s wishes. Griesemer also voted no because she said she didn’t think “the public wants games.”
Since the amounts were already advertised to the public, the budget could not be changed at that time, but Hamner can come back to the council starting in January to ask for an appropriation of those funds, Ison said.
The deferral and pretrial funds are fee-based, meaning revenue for them is generated from fees people pay to the prosecutor’s office. The money does not disappear with this particular budget reduction, and Hamner can return once in office to have those dollars appropriated, if he wishes, Ison said.
“The amount of money in those accounts was not affected in the proxy here. And we’ll have that available to him, if he so needs an appropriation next year,” Ison said.
Villanueva did not respond to requests for a further interview about the budget. Hamner declined to comment.
Increase in sheriff’s office pay
The sheriff’s office received a roughly 7% increase in its general fund budgets for the sheriff’s office and the jail, bringing funds to $12.2 million.
Most positions in the sheriff’s office and jail, for deputies and correction officers, received above the 4% base increase. Raises ranged from 7% to 13%, depending on the level of the positions.
Sheriff Duane Burgess — who is the highest-paid county employee — received a lower increase of 3.3%, bringing his salary to $148,748. Below him, Chief Deputy Andrew Barnhart received an 11.7% raise, in addition to $1,900 from the formula calculation, bringing his pay to $90,500. Majors, which are the next-highest management positions in the department, received the highest increase of 13%.
Sheriff’s deputies received a 7% pay increase, on top of increases from the salary study formula.
Recruitment and retention is a recent struggle for all police departments, locally and nationally, Ison said. Ison, who is also chief of the Greenwood Police Department, has experienced this first-hand and understands the need.
Increasing the pay at the sheriff’s office and jail was needed to remain competitive.
“What we’re seeing is a mass exodus of officers who are able to retire, and fewer younger people who are wanting to take up this profession,” Ison said.
With Greenwood also increasing its police department pay by 7% for 2023, the county had to narrow the pay gap between Greenwood police and sheriff’s deputies, Ison said. Greenwood police are the highest-paid police officers in Johnson County.
“We had to decrease that gap … so that pay disparity didn’t widen any more to where when they needed to hire people, and they couldn’t be competitive with surrounding agencies,” Ison said.
Funds shift for new income tax
Next year marks the beginning of the county collecting $4 million dollars from the new EDIT approved in August.
The .2% local income tax increase was passed to free up funds to pay for road projects that county officials have said are long overdue.
In addition to using revenue from the recent tax increase, in the 2023 budget, the county is shifting funds to pay for road projects. Funding for about half of the jail expenses, including the raises are going to be paid with revenue from the local income tax, or LIT, that was raised to fund the Johnson County Jail expansion.
The jail LIT, as it is referred to by county officials, was passed in 2019 and increased income taxes in the county by .2%. The revenue from that tax is being used to pay off the debt for the jail construction — which will be paid off in 2025 — as well as jail operating expenses and other criminal justice-related expenses.
Since the jail is two years from being paid off, more public safety expenses could be shifted from the general fund to the LIT, freeing up around $3.6 million to pay for road projects.
Additionally, the council on Monday approved $3 million from the rainy day fund to go toward work on Smith Valley Road near the Interstate 69 interchange — a project that is deemed a priority for the county.
These shifts are not a permanent change, though, Ison said. Uses for the LIT can be decided during each annual budget session.
“That was the will of this council,” Ison said. “However, that’s going to have to be determined every budget year by future councils … they will have that option of transferring or freeing up money out of the general fund.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story contained a typographical error regarding the county council salary. The story previously said $4,000 but the raise was about $400.
