A group of Arizona lawmakers stripped off an amendment to a proposal that would have required elected county officials to vote to accept a pay hike.
The current version of H2102, sponsored by Rep. William Konopnicki, R-5, seeks to raise the annual salary of seven county officials by approximately 13 percent. Affected officials include the county attorney, assessor, recorder, sheriff, superintendent of schools, supervisors and treasurer.
In the original bill, the county attorney, for example, is guaranteed an increase to $123,678 from $109,450, and the sheriff, an increase to $100,824 from $89,225, beginning January 2009.
On May 15, six lawmakers — three members from each chamber — met in a conference committee and adopted the House version of H2102. That version, which contains the sponsor’s original intent, now goes back to the Senate and the House for final votes.
Konopnicki was opposed to the Senate amendment, offered by Sen. Ron Gould, R-3. His intent was to remove the amendment in the conference. Gould, who represented the Senate side together with Senators Jake Flake, R-5, and Rebecca Rios, D-23, anticipated the move.
Immediately after the House side voted to adopt the House version, Gould offered a verbal amendment to the Senate version of the bill.
The gist of his verbal motion was to require the county board of supervisors to take a majority vote to accept all or part of the proposed pay raise, and for other county officials to individually determine whether to accept all or part of the hike.
As it came out of the Senate, the bill required the board of supervisors to set the salaries of elected officials and prohibited any increase except through a majority and roll call vote of the board in a public meeting.
Gould: Officials need to be held accountable for own pay raises
Gould, an outspoken conservative, had vigorously opposed giving county officials a pay hike. By offering the amendment, he intended to make officials accountable and perhaps also to shame them into not accepting the pay raise. He argued that under the current system, an official could simply shrug his shoulders and say the pay hike was given to him by the Legislature. He or she could not refuse it.
But Gould said he realized that his earlier floor amendment gave the board of supervisors authority over other officials’ pay. His verbal amendment in the conference committee was meant to rectify that. County officials shouldn’t be “held hostage” by the board, he said. Each should be able to “take the pay increase and suffer whatever the consequences voters might place upon them,” he said.
Procedural questions came up at the conference committee and legislators discussed what amendments could be offered during the May 15 meeting. Gould pointed out that it was a “free” conference committee; hence, “anything goes,” he said. He added that the only reason they were meeting was to remove his floor amendment.
Flake and Rios eventually voted down the Gould verbal amendment. The two also accepted the House motion to adopt its version of the bill and a seven-page technical amendment.
His motion’s defeat apparently meant that “they want to provide political cover for county elected officials so they could take their raise and blame it on the Legislature,” according to Gould.
Konopnicki was decidedly upset at Gould’s maneuvers in the Senate and during the conference committee. Specifically, he was irked that a member of his own party did not even bother to contact him to tell him about the amendments.
“It does cause problems,” he said.
Later, Konopnicki said: “First of all, H2102 is a bill that I sponsored. (It) went to the Senate and an amendment was put on in the Senate without ever talking to me about the amendment.
Konopnicki ‘blindsided’ by verbal amendment
“I tried to contact him with no response. Typically, when you are of the same party, you contact somebody and say, I’m going to put an amendment on your bill, and you talk about it before it’s done. Even if they don’t agree at least they know it’s coming. But to be blindsided by the amendment, to be blindsided by the verbal amendment, is just not the way we do business,” he added.
Gould responded: “There is no rule that says that I have to get Representative Konopnicki’s permission to amend his bill. He was the one that chose a free conference committee, and a free conference committee means that I can do whatever I want to, and if he doesn’t like it that’s just tough because I don’t work for Representative Konopnicki. I work for the constituents of my district.”