Sheriff wants better pay for deputies

Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson raised the issue of better pay for deputies Thursday, a week before he and other department heads meet with County Commissioners in the second and final round of budget talks.

Watson said the 3 percent, merit-based raises commissioners have proposed for county workers “doesn’t even touch the problem. We need closer to 30 percent. The problem has been building for 10 years.”

According to the sheriff’s figures, Kootenai County deputies start at $14 and hour and top out at $20.59. This makes them among the lowest-paid law enforcement officers in the region, Watson said, citing examples from the Coeur d’Alene Police Department ($17.43/$22.97 an hour) and the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office ($18.58/$25.65 an hour).

“Any deputy can drive 20 minutes and make $1,000 a month more,” Watson said, citing steady turnover in his department over the last decade.

County Commissioner Rick Currie said sheriff’s deputies aren’t the only county workers experiencing wage gaps.

“The sheriff is in there with absolutely everyone else,” Currie said Thursday. “It all comes out of the same pot.”

Currie said the county is facing a $500,000 expense to cover indigent health care under mandates from state and federal governments, and he said the 911 dispatch workers, not part of the sheriff’s department, have bigger wage gaps and higher turnover than deputies do.

“The sheriff’s budget is major,” Currie said, citing public safety as an important function of local government. “But public safety is not just putting people behind bars. Part of it is keeping those people behind bars, and then there are the courts. It mushrooms.”

County Finance Director David McDowell said, “This has been a tough year getting everything in balance.”

The commissioners expect the upcoming budget to be around $57 million and must have it published by early August to give county residents a chance to look it over in advance of a public meeting Sept. 7.

The sheriff’s budget, roughly $11.7 million, is the largest of county departments, McDowell said, and encompasses a third of all county employees.

So any pay raise issue looms large for the sheriff, who is running for re-election against Independent candidate John Weick.

During the upcoming second round of budget talks, “If something went sideways when the commissioners made their adjustments, it gives department managers one last chance to make their pitch,” McDowell said.