Ramsey County Commissioners join Janice Rettman

For years, Janice Rettman has been the only Ramsey County commissioner opposing the commission’s regular pay increases, the minority in a series of 6 to 1 votes.

Suddenly, her colleagues now join her. The commissioners have decided that they will not accept another raise this time around. They will get by with a little more than $80,000 a year.

People have often thought that politicians like Commissioner Rettman who vote against their own pay increase are grandstanding a bit. Maybe they are, but now the whole commission is made of grandstanders.

The county will save something like $17,000 in this move. That is poultry feed in a budget so big.

I have long felt that county commissioners are overpaid when compared with city councilmembers. I understand that they handle bigger budgets for larger constituencies, but it seems that so many more of the dollars they handle are already committed by their funding sources.

Maybe this will make the disparity a bit less, but let’s see what happens when the financial state of the county gets better. Somehow I suspect that the commissioners [at least six of them] will want to make up for lost time and the pay will zoom up extra quickly.