Health District Dumps Larger Raise For Workers Staff Members Say They’D Rather See Services Restored

(From For the Record, July 29, 2000): Story wrong: The Washington State Auditor’s Office was meeting with the Spokane Regional Board of Health to discuss the findings from its routine annual audit. A story in Friday’s paper misstated the reason for the audit.

An attempt to double this year’s cost-of-living raise for Spokane Regional Health District employees failed after lengthy debate Thursday.

Health district workers are telling health board members they want to restore public services lost to recent budget cuts before they are paid more, Spokane County Commissioner and health board member Kate McCaslin said.

“If I have a choice to return some of the services, I think that’s the route we should go rather than an across-the-board raise,” McCaslin said.

Those sentiments were echoed in e-mails that health district staff sent to McCaslin and other board members.

Last month, the health board decided on a 1.5 percent raise instead of a 3 percent raise, and told the staff to draft a report on what the savings would buy in terms of restored services. Board member Margaret Jones then proposed reconsidering the larger raise.

“I would strenuously object to consider (a raise) until we have the staff report,” McCaslin said.

Jones said she is hearing from employees who say they don’t feel valued because they haven’t received a larger raise. Jones handed out data that she argued proves the pay of health district employees isn’t keeping up with that of Spokane city and county employees or inflation.

“We’re going to have to catch up or we’re going to lose the middle management people we need,” Jones said.

Health District Director Dr. Kim Thorburn said the grants that fund most of the salaries come with built-in cost-of-living adjustments. If the money isn’t used for salary increases, “sometimes we find ourselves scrambling to figure out how to spend the excess funds in the grant,” Thorburn said.

Thorburn also argued that not giving the raise will only save the health district $47,000, not the approximately $86,000 projected last month.

After two 5-5 votes, the board abandoned efforts to increase the raise.

In other business, the board:

* Approved a new fee policy making it optional for the health district to discount medical and dental services for people living below the poverty line. Health District administrators say they have always done business this way and the change only formalizes standing policy.

* Approved new rates for everything from childhood vaccinations to hepatitis tests, over the objections of McCaslin and board member Roberta Greene, who want to wait until the Washington Supreme Court rules on whether increasing fees is legal under Initiative 695. Greene also objected to raising childhood immunization rates, considering that only about 70 percent of Spokane children are immunized.

* Debated whether to take title of the Ecocycle composting facility, clean it up and then try to sell the property to recoup some of the cleanup expenses.

The operators of the facility went bankrupt and are no longer liable for cleanup.

* Postponed hearing a report from the Washington state auditor’s office on a recent probe of some accounting practices at the health district.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BACKGROUND Pay raises

Last month, the health board decided on a 1.5 percent raise instead of a 3 percent raise, and told the staff to draft a report on what the savings would buy in terms of restored services. Board member Margaret Jones then proposed reconsidering the larger raise.