Pay Disparity: Many Flagler Government Employees Paid Less While Several “All Stars” Are Overpaid

A salary study commissioned by Flagler government found disparities in pay between county government’s 370-some employees and their peers in other governments, with most underpaid.

But the study also found some top administrative employees and a few others in the ranks overpaid, some of them significantly so: the disparities are not just between Flagler County and other local governments, but within Flagler County government itself, with an “all stars” system rewarding some employees far more than others.

Among those found to be overpaid, based on the survey’s midpoint averages, are Airport Director Roy Sieger, Tourism Director Matt Dunn, Economics Development Director Helga van Eckert, IT Director Jarrod Shupe, County Engineer Faith al-Khatib, Planner Wendy Hickey, Paralegal Sean Moylan, Christie Mayer, the executive assistant to County Administrator Craig Coffey, Sally Sherman, his erstwhile deputy and current “special projects” contractor, along with some planners, some equipment operators and some mechanics.  

The survey did not look at positions appointed by the county commission–the county administrator and the county attorney, who are paid $159,000 and $210,000 respectively. (County Attorney Al Hadeed has an annual automatic raise built into his contract.) It also did not analyze employee salaries outside the county commission. That is, none of the constitutional officers’ ranks, including the sheriff’s, were included in the analysis.

Either way, the Flagler County Commission last week signaled approval of a $1 million, three-year plan to raise the pay of county employees, starting with a 3 percent across-the-board raise kicking in Oct. 1, whether the employee is overpaid or not.  That will cost $375,000 next year.

It did not signal any interest in lowering the pay of those above market averages. In fact, earlier this year, the commission approved raising one of those pay categories–that which covers the county engineer and the deputy county administrator–after Coffey said that it would anticipate the ongoing salary study’s findings. It did not not: the raises proved steeper than  the salary study found to be necessary.

Coffey defended the raises, as when he addressed a question about Sieger, the airport director whom the county kept aboard with an 11 percent raise to nearly match the $118,000 salary he had been offered in Hillsborough County. The big increase for Al-Khatib’s position, bringing her salary to $150,000, was likewise designed to match pay she was being offered in Volusia. The midpoint for that position, according to the salary survey, is $117,000.

“He’s either at the top or near the top of the range,” Coffey said of Sieger’s salary, downplaying the reality: Sieger’s $112,000 salary is in fact 32 percent above the midpoint of $85,000, according to the salary survey, for similar jobs. “We’re paying higher to some of our department heads because they’re higher-level people in  smaller fishbowl in some capacity, or they bring special skills to the table. We’ve got a stable of all-stars, and I’m trying to keep them, I really believe that.”

The “all-star” designation is of course Coffey’s, not an objective, independent finding.

But it reflects Coffey’s willingness to award salaries at the very top of the “maximum” scales or better (according to the study) to certain chosen employees, while the rank and file must settle for salary adjustments that will bring them in line with the midpoint of the study, not its maximum. That disparity is not usually a good recipe for morale. 

Coffey earlier this year allowed Sherman to “retire” and return the next day at a much higher pay of $149,000 (up from $136,000) as a “contractor” working under a different title, though she is fulfilling uch the same work she did before as deputy. The midrange for her position, according to the salary study: $126,000.

Similarly, Tourism Director Matt Dunn’s $92,000 salary is well above the $74,000 midpoint of the survey and closer to the “maximum,” Coffey’s assistant’s salary of $57,000 was $7,000 above the midpoint, and paralegal Sean Moylan’s $61,000 salary was found to be $12,000 above the midpoint, though Moylan, an attorney, is categorized as a paralegal at that pay while fulfilling roles more closely associated with those of a deputy attorney–a position at a much higher grade of pay, left vacant several years running.

Some positions in Flagler were found to be below market midpoints by the survey, when actual salaries are, in fact, above that midpoint. IT Director Jarrod Shupe’s position, Innovation Technology Director, was found by the survey to be 9 percent below the midrange of $109,000. In fact, Shupe’s current salary of $118,000, according to records provided by the county, shows him well above the midpoint. Same story with Van Eckert’s $120,000 salary, which is $13,500 above the survey’s midpoint range, even though the survey listed her position’s salary locally to be 6 percent below the $106,505 midpoint average.

Other than Commissioner Charlie Ericksen’s question about the airport director, commissioners raised no questions about the employees found to be overpaid.

The second part of the pay plan, which the commission appears ready to approve next year, would consist of pay “adjustments” (that is, raises) for positions found to be below market rates, and the creation of a “step plan” so that every year, an employee in a certain classification would see an automatic raise, over and above cost of living, that reflects experience in that job. The Sheriff’s Office, Bunnell and the School Board have such step plans, which stretch over 20 years. The plan recommended for the county would stretch over 26 years.

“The step plan “gives our employees an opportunity to see that they are going to get some increases,” Flagler’s human resources director, Joe Mayer, said. “We have to keep these memployees, this is a way to start.”

The plan also calls for raising of the minimum pay for county employees from the current $9.72 to $12 an hour rate. The $12 rate is still below the living wage standard for a single adult, according to an MIT calculation, and it falls well below the minimum pay of $14.68 an hour for full-timers in Palm Coast government and most low-wage employees in Bunnell government (who, even at the lowest end of the scale, can cross the $12-threshold after a few years’ experience). But Flagler’s $12 wage will help about 40 employees, among them bus drivers, library assistants, some equipment operators and adult day care workers push their pay across the $25,000-a-year threshold.

Those found to be significantly underpaid, according to the study, are Library Director Holly Albanese, Planning Director Adam Mengel, Public Information Officer Julie Murphy, Benefits Manager Anita Stoker, Purchasing Manager Kristen Collora, Deputy Fire Chief Joe King, and to some extent Emergency Services Manager Jonathan Lord, along with budget analysts, project managers, equipment operators, employees in IT, some mechanics and tradesworkers, and a few EMT’s. Public Lands and Natural Resources Manager Tim Telfer’s job title does not appear on Evergreen’s list, but his $67,000 salary, is significantly below that of managers in other classifications.

Albanese’s and Mengel’s $79,000 salary is 21 and 17 percent below the midpoint for those positions. King’s current salary of $77,800 is 24 percent below the midrange salary of $91,000. Most of the county’s firefighter-paramedics are at or slightly above market pay, with salaries in the $42,700 to $45,600 range. Murphy’s $48,000 salary, reflecting substantial recent raises, is almost 20 percent below the market’s mid-point, though when Murphy was hired to replace Carl Laundrie, Laundrie’s position was split into two positions, at lower salaries (but a higher total), so the county could expand its PR and marketing reach. The salary range for those positions three years ago was $33,000 to $38,000. Laundrie was earning $62,500 when he retired.

The county hired Tallahassee-based Evergreen Solutions for $38,500 to conduct the salary study. (The company has been paid $28,875 so far.) Evergreen surveyed pay scales in 11 Florida counties and seven cities and based its recommendations for Flagler on minimum, midpoint and maximum averages of wages paid within each job classification in those governments, while adjusting for Flagler’s cost of living, based on University of Florida data. Evergreen presented its findings to the county commission at a workshop last week.

Local governments frequently hire such companies to provide an ostensibly objective analysis of pay scales, though the companies rarely if ever return a study that does not recommend raises: the studies provide political cover for local agencies to go ahead with what usually results in substantial pay increases, which then feed into the data stream that the same companies use to justify further pay raises in other “peer” agencies. Evergreen over the past few years conducted studies for the Highlands County School Board, Highlands County government, Hernando County government, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and Key West government, among others, all of which led to pay increases. Highlands and Marion counties were among the respondents to Evergreen’s survey for Flagler.

The governments surveyed for the Flagler study were Alachua, Sumter, Bay, Volusia, Highlands, Indian River, Lake, Marion, Santa Rosa, Seminole and St. Johns counties, and Gainesville, Jacksonville, Ocala, Orlando, Palm Coast, Port Orange, and St. Augustine.

“There’s no perfect system,” Coffey said, “this gets us a lot further, a lot closer, to where we should be.”

“Conceptually this is taking us in the right direction,” County Commissioner Don O’Brien said. Millennials, he said, “need to be a key component in our thought process because the workforce is going to turn over, they have different needs and we need to be prepared for that.”

Coffey was effusive in his thanks to commissioners at the end of the workshop. “Thank you very much commissioners, this is very much appreciated on behalf of the employees. Again, they’ve worked a lot through the downturn, they do a tremendous amount of projects you’re going to hear me talk about during my budget presentation tomorrow, but it starts at the top, you are essentially our board of directors, and thank you for giving us this opportunity, thank you for allowing us to do this study and make these changes.”