With a better benefit package for sergeants, one that equals what deputies receive, the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office is now recruiting internally for several sergeant positions.
The recently approved benefit gains include having the county pay the six percent employee contribution to their retirement funds and reducing their portion of monthly health insurance premiums for family members covered on their insurance from 25 to 15 percent.
“I’m super excited,” said Wasco County Sheriff Lane Magill. “It’s going to improve our options to help people promote” to patrol sergeant.
Two sergeant positions were posted internally after the Wasco County Commission approved the benefit change at its Sept. 4 meeting. A third open sergeant position will be filled later.
The sheriff’s office currently has only one sergeant.
Because sergeants had increased benefit expenses once they were promoted, it was essentially a wash financially, even with a bump in pay.
But now, at a minimum, there is at least a six percent increase to their paycheck since they don’t have to pay their retirement anymore, said Wasco County Human Resources Director Nichole Biechler.
“We’re talking maybe a couple hundred dollars more a month that they’re going to bring home,” she said.
Patrol sergeant pay starts at $5,534 a month. Under Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), employees pay six percent of their salary toward their retirement, which is matched by the employer.
The change in insurance benefit, if they’re paying for anyone other than themselves, could perhaps save them $200 a month if they were covering a family, she said.
If the employee is the only one on the insurance, the county pays 100 percent of the monthly premium.
The cost impact to the county, with all four sergeant positions filled, would range from $11,000 to $28,000 per year, depending on the``v insurance benefit options taken.
The change was made effective Sept. 1 for the retirement benefit, but the insurance benefit won’t kick in until open enrollment begins in January, Biechler said.
At the county commission meeting, Wasco County Administrative Officer Tyler Stone said he had a concern that it would set a precedent for other Wasco County employees, but acknowledged that the sheriff’s office was having trouble moving deputies into sergeant positions, “so it definitely fixes that problem.”
Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege said he also had concerns about it setting a precedent within the county. He also said the public “gets frustrated that the employees are not contributing to their retirement, and so when you pick up the six percent that they were paying and start paying that, it’s like, ‘Ooh.’”
He asked why the county didn’t look at just increasing their pay so they’d have more cash to pay their own retirement benefit. Stone said directly paying it costs the county less, because if they’d increased wages to cover it, the county would have had to pay more for other costs like Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Biechler said at the commission meeting that wage increases can’t be undone, “but a benefit can be removed at any time.”
Biechler said it had been a longstanding issue at the sheriff’s office, but due to the amount of sergeant vacancies, it was an issue that needed to be addressed “sooner rather than later.”
Hege said it was clearly a longstanding issue and there was no question it has been a problem.
“It’s just how do we resolve it, and even though I don’t necessarily agree with this approach, we’ve determined that it’s the best approach and I’m gonna be fine with that,” he said.
Deputies, and now sergeants, as well as parole and probation employees, are the only county employees that have their share of retirement contributions paid by the county, and they are also the only ones with 85 percent of their insurance premiums paid for family member coverage.
Other county employees make their own retirement contribution, and the county pays 75 percent of their insurance premiums for family member coverage.
Stone told the Chronicle later that the change in benefits is essentially a move back to the way sergeant benefits used ot work.
About six years ago the county reworked its compensation structure and changed the sergeant benefits to be the same as other non-represented employees.
The unintended consequence, said Stone, was that “it created this compression between the union benefits and the sergeants’ benefits that made it essentially not attractive for people to promote up through the ranks.”
He said the precedent he worried about is the possible expectation that when someone moves into a management position, they will get a different level of benefits, like sergeants now have.
“That’s not the case anywhere else in the organization, other than dealing with this one particular issue, and we’re essentially moving back to what we used to do to create parity across that transition from deputy to sergeant.”
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