Cape Girardeau County Commission puts employee salaries on website, adds commissioner to salary committee

Click here to download the document, obtained from the Cape Girardeau County website.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission has approved placing salaries of all county employees on its website.

During its meeting today, the commission also voted to include one of the commissioners to serve on a committee that evaluates salaries of all employees.

The vote comes four days after 2nd District Commissioner Jay Purcell made an issue of salary increases for three employees, saying that a closer review of salary raises showed that three county employees received raises well above what most employees received. Those employees received raises between 10 and 15 percent, compared to the average salary increase of 3 percent for county employees.

According to the county website, emergency management director Dick Knaup's salary is $42,336, an increase from $37,165, prosecuting attorney office manager and supervising secretary Kristi McGowen's salary went from $28,450 to $32,763 and public works director Don McQuay's salary went from $47,501 to $52,461.

A salary committee was formed in 2007 and determined that those and many other county employees were underpaid compared to counties of similar size. While both 1st District Commissioner Paul Koeper and Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said they received the report, Purcell said he was not aware of the document until Thursday.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said he was under the impression that all three commissioners received a copy of the document.

Donna Oldham, assistant to the county commission, said discussion of the document did not appear on the agendas or in the minutes for meetings last year but said such discussions could have taken place during the budgetary process.

Purcell said it should have appeared on the agenda to allow the public an opportunity to discuss the document. The issue, he said, is the process by which the three employees received their raises.

"I'm not going to sit here and say they don't deserve raises," Purcell said. "I'm not going to say they are not good employees or anything like that.

"What I am saying, it was not done in a public way, none of this stuff was done in a public way," Purcell said. "It's not in any of the minutes. It never came to the county commission as a body."

Koeper said the increases were included in the budget as part of a gross salary line item. He said figures in the salary committee report were used when establishing 2010 salaries for county employees.

"I believe that if a department head or elected official sees the need to raise an employee's salary to compensate that employee for additional work or to be competitive in the open market, and stay within a budget, that should be their decision," Koeper said.

He then suggested that future salaries should be listed as part of the actual copy of the budget.

"Maybe we should require every department head attach any salary increases above the norm set by the commission and any justifications," Koeper said. "In addition, I believe a salary schedule should be attached to the new budget and become part of the budget. Then there would be no questions."

Jones said the commissioners did not sneak in any raises in the budget like Purcell accused them of doing and that he resented Purcell's comments last week that Koeper and Jones were voting "themselves and their friends and cronies raises."

Jones said he is tired of defending himself against Purcell.

"Most people who fail to study their own budget would not call a press conference to draw attention to their lack of knowledge," Jones said. "So instead of admitting he did not know because of his own failure to work and help with the county budget, he accuses the other commissioners who did all the work of sneaking something past him.

"It was never, ever in anybody's mind about sneaking anything through," Jones said. "The budgetary process was entirely open, transparent, above board."

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