Brevard County commissioners will continue to make salaries of $58,308 a year – at least until newly elected Commissioner Bryan Lober can mount a referendum asking voters to reduce their pay.
That was the result of Lober’s Dec. 4 effort, in his first meeting, to get each of his colleagues to return voluntarily $8,231 a year to the county general fund.
“This is a resolution,” Lober, of Rockledge, told his colleagues. “There’s no teeth in it.”
He said he hoped the others would cooperate and return the $8,231, which he had calculated as the difference between the gross salary and the county’s median household income. “There’s no punishment for failing to do this other than looking bad,” he said.
Lober said he didn’t think commissioners, many of whom have private-sector jobs in addition to their elected posts, should make more than most families make.
Quizzed by Commissioner John Tobia, of Grant-Valkaria, Lober said if his colleagues agreed to the resolution, he’d volunteer to track their pay to make sure they complied.
Tobia recalled Lober’s predecessor, businessman Jim Barfield of Merritt Island, used to return his entire county pay, not just part of it, to county coffers.
“And he never once took any recognition for that,” Tobia said.
Lober’s colleagues, for varying reasons, didn’t agree to his group effort.
“Giving back $8,000 to the general fund says I agree with the spending in the general fund,” Chairwoman Kristine Isnardi said. “Often I do not. I am conflicted on this. If (county management) is spending money the way I don’t agree with, why would I give them more money?”
Brevard County spokesman Don Walker said commissioners also get $70 a year worth of basic life insurance. But the gross annual salaries are each offset by $3,615 in Social Security taxes and $845 in Medicare taxes. In addition, he said, the Florida Retirement System calls for a contribution of $28,396 a year, and commissioners voluntarily contribute $1,749 a year on top of that.
That leaves $23,773 a year in net pay before federal income taxes.
The Brevard County Charter, which voters adopted in November 1994, allows the commission to vote every two years on an ordinance to change its members’ salaries. So far, that hasn’t happened, Commissioner Curt Smith said.
“You have to consider that the salary we get now hasn’t changed since 1999,” Smith, of Melbourne, told Lober.
The charter still gives a commissioner’s salary as “that in effect on Dec. 31, 1999.”
For counties without home-rule charters, the Legislature each year sets their officials’ salaries based on their population.
The University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research in April estimated Brevard County’s population as 583,563, including 194 inmates in the county jail.
In September, the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research aid that if the county charter didn’t already prevail, the Brevard County Commission’s 2018-19 salaries would have been $91,181 a year.
After Lober presented his resolution, County Attorney Eden Bentley said commissioners couldn’t simply reduce their salaries without an ordinance.
Since the charter specifies a salary, she said, they would have to accept the full amount and then return the $8,231, if they so decided.
Tobia suggested Lober not settle for a toothless resolution and instead go for a true ordinance or a charter amendment through a referendum.
“I’d like to put teeth in it,” Tobia said.
Commissioner Rita Pritchett, of Titusville, said she admired Lober’s heart, but said the job of a commissioner is too expensive to do without just compensation. Further, she said, the job also requires a commissioner give up certain sources of private-sector income to remain free of conflicts of interest.
Isnardi, of Palm Bay, said the salary allows a working professional to take such private-sector income cuts and still be able to work for the public.
“I don’t want a person (on the commission) who can’t do this job because he has to be at his 8-hour-a-day job,” she said.