Spokane County Sheriff seeks $30,000 raise as wages for command staff subordinates outpace his own

Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels has asked county commissioners for a more than $30,000 raise after recent labor negotiations led the county’s senior law enforcement official to receive less compensation than his top-ranking subordinates.

Nowels told the county’s governing board Tuesday that the request is not unlike past appeals from those who held the position before him. Former Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich spent years lobbying the commission to change their formula for determining the sheriff’s salary to provide more separation between himself and command staff.

At the time, the county used an average of what the sheriffs in Pierce, Clark, Kitsap, Snohomish, Yakima and Benton counties made, and Knezovich’s 2016 salary of $123,234 had fallen behind more than a dozen of what his direct reports brought home that year.

In an interview last week, Nowels said the same scenario is about to play out again.

“The lieutenants are going to be getting paid, at least base salary-wise, very close to what I made,” Nowels said. “Those are my middle managers, and then my executive staff are all going to be surpassing my salary by quite a bit.”

Since 2018, the Spokane County Commission has used the salary of another elected position, the county prosecutor, to determine the salary of the sheriff. The sheriff receives 90% of the prosecutor’s salary, per county law, which is equal to that of a Superior Court judge. How much judges are paid is set by the state’s Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Public Officials.

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, and Superior Court judges statewide, will receive a salary of $237,500 as of July 1, according to the commission.

Nowels asked the commissioners to set the sheriff’s salary at 5.6% greater than that of what an undersheriff makes, which he said would address “compression issues” between the hierarchy and associated wages at his office in perpetuity. Law enforcement wages have risen dramatically nationwide in recent years as part of recruitment and retention efforts, and he believes basing his position’s salary off of an undersheriff’s wages would prevent the conversation from coming up again.

Nowels’ proposed formula would bring his current base pay of roughly $205,000 to more than $236,000 this year, a raise of 15%. He said ensuring separation between compensation for command staff and the sheriff’s role will keep the position attractive to highly qualified candidates.

“The reality of it is, finding highly qualified police executives has become very expensive in this country,” Nowels said. “I think if you’re not willing to at least pay somewhat competitively, then you probably end up with people leading organizations that don’t belong there.”

Following union negotiations, the county has set the base salary for the agency’s four undersheriffs at nearly $224,000 and inspectors at nearly $213,000. The bottom end of the command staff, lieutenants, will receive a base rate between $170,500 and $188,500, according to data provided by the agency. Those figures do not include overtime or additional pay earned for service on specialty units.

Nowels’ suggestion to tie his salary to the undersheriff’s wages was inspired by a similar move in Clark County, where voters approved a ballot measure last fall to set the position’s salary at 8% higher than the highest-paid undersheriff. Clark County Sheriff John Horch saw his wages rise more than 50%, from a base of around $156,000 in 2024 to just over $237,000, as reported by the Columbian.

“In discussing with Sheriff Horch about how that’s worked out, I thought that might not be a bad approach for our county commissioners to take,” Nowels said. “So we didn’t keep having to come back every five to seven years and readjust the sheriff’s salary.”

The raise would bring Nowels on par with Horch, who both serve counties of similar population, and above what more populated Snohomish and Pierce counties pay their sheriffs. Spokane County is unique in that lineup, as Nowels does not oversee detention services as other sheriffs often do.

Members of the Spokane County Commission expressed reservations in having an elected official’s salary tied to wages ironed out in union negotiations, but noted the current formula may not be the best. The state salary commission does not consider or determine compensation for sheriff’s when setting a judge’s salary, and by extension, a prosecutor’s salary.

Commissioner Josh Kerns said his reservations stem from the fact there’s no telling how those negotiations may play out down the road. If the county entered into arbitration with the deputy or command staff union and that third party found against the county in a wage dispute, a huge payout “could really bump you, or whoever is the sheriff at the time.”

“That’s quite a ripple effect from a deputy all the way up to the sheriff,” Kerns said.

Chair Mary Kuney proposed setting the salary at 5% above the undersheriffs for the time being, and then having the county’s local citizen salary commission consider the matter every two years beginning four years from now. The commission meets biannually to make salary decisions for offices like those of the commissioners, auditor and treasurer, based on a review of wages of elected officials throughout the state.

In an interview last week, Kuney said doing so would help keep politics out of the calculus regardless of who sits on the commission and in the sheriff’s seat in years to come. If Nowels’ salary continues to be pegged to the prosecutor’s, the sheriff will likely be outpaced in wages again by the next round of union negotiations when the current three-year contracts end, she added.

“Then the sheriff gets to go and explain his job to them, and say why he’s worth the salary that he wants to get,” Kuney said. “Because they can change it from 5% to more than that or less than that.”

Nowels included in his proposal a plan to reduce an inspector position to a deputy level by the end of the year, when one of the individuals holding that title retires. Doing so would cover the cost of his raise, and save the county an estimated $65,000 over the course of three years, he said.

The commissioners thanked Nowels for proposing a way to cover the costs as they considered just how to adjust his salary, an eventuality that appeared to have bipartisan support. The county, like many jurisdictions across the state, are bracing for a difficult 2026 budgeting process amidst widespread uncertainty in state and federal grants, as well as stagnating sales tax revenue.

“I definitely support an adjustment, because we need to do that,” Commissioner Amber Waldref said. “I appreciate you finding money in the budget by eliminating a position to make that happen, so we’re not finding money elsewhere.”

The commissioners will likely hold a vote on Nowels’ request in the coming weeks. Compensating the sheriff fairly and competitively will help ensure qualified candidates run for and stay in the position down the road, Kuney said. Those interested candidates are often law enforcement officials with years of experience at the command staff level, and she does not want the possible cut to wages or benefits to preclude them from throwing their hat in the ring.

“You want someone who’s qualified, right?” Kuney said. “So, typically, it’s going to be somebody who’s coming up through the ranks, who’s going to want to stay in the community, and is part of our community. That’s what you want to see, and it makes sense they’re going to get compensated at a level that they’re going to be supervising people.”