Salary story stranger, but no clearer

Almost three months after a fateful closed session of Columbus Council in which substantial pay raises for city officials were discussed, debated and ultimately rescinded, the public knows little more about the episode now than then.

What we suspected then, and have scant reason to think differently about now, is that the city’s handling of the whole issue was stunningly inept.

A familiar problem in pay hierarchies both public and private is salary compression — a pattern of inflation and competition pushing up new salaries even as longtime employees’ pay increases flatten out. In Columbus, some new department heads were being paid more than some top executives.

The issue was discussed in an Aug. 9 executive session of council, minutes of which are relatively specific regarding the discussion.

City Manager Isaiah Hugley was told to handle the issue administratively, and a few salaries were raised more than 20 percent; the resulting “uphill domino effect,” as Mayor Teresa Tomlinson called it, was that 16 executive salaries were increased, up to Hugley’s own.

After an Open Records request by the Ledger-Enquirer in September, Hugley emailed council members with an updated salaries list, and council met for a second executive session on the salary issue. This apparently was a strange and contentious session. Councilor Glenn Davis asked that those having received raises leave, a group that included the city’s attorneys and clerks, leaving nobody to record minutes or address legal issues. The result of the meeting was that all the raises were canceled and those who had already received the new rates had to repay the difference.

The recorded minutes — apparently taken by the mayor herself in the clerk’s absence — note: “There was much discussion surrounding the issue of recent executive pay raises.”

One can imagine, though at this point imagination is mostly what we’re left with. Though there is reportedly an electronic recording of that meeting, City Attorney Clifton Fay said the recording, unlike the minutes, is not public record. Tomlinson also said the recording is not a “legally required record.”

If there’s anything about any of this that was handed adeptly, even competently, we’re missing it.

It can’t have sat well with those who were told they were getting raises, many of whom no doubt adjusted their budgets for the holidays and beyond, to have them yanked back so unceremoniously. Nor could it have sat well with the city’s rank-and-file employees to hear of such hefty pay hikes for the top echelon, however short-lived the new prosperity.

One of the most curious questions is whether this vaguely transcribed special session qualified as one anyway — a question raised by Tomlinson herself. In a heated email exchange between the mayor and Davis, she wrote that there were “no legal grounds to have concealed the discussion from [the clerks]”; and also that “because legal counsel was instructed to leave the room, it was not an Executive Session in the ordinary sense, or perhaps any sense.”

If not, there’s no good reason for withholding details from the public.

This story was originally published December 19, 2016 at 3:05 PM with the headline "Salary story stranger, but no clearer."