The Hamilton JournalNews requested salaries of those public employees that were compensated at least $60,000 in 2012 from 67 governmental entites as well as judges from 11 courts in Butler and Warren counties. For this story looking at county, city, township, law enforcement and fire officials, we evaluated more than 1,500 salaries from the 13 entities in Butler County.
The top county, city and township administrators are the highest paid among public sector jobs, but often are held accountable for every aspect of their community.
The Hamilton JournalNews evaluated 1,506 salaries for employees who earned at least $60,000 in salary and benefits for county, city, township, law enforcement and fire department positions in 2012.
The results showed that Hamilton preceded all non-education government entities by paying 429 employees a collective $34.8 million last year.
Butler County government was second on that list, paying just under $26.67 million to 369 employees.
Middletown ranked fourth paying 174 employees just more than $13.15 million behind West Chester Twp. (172 employees at a collective $13.8 million) and ahead of Fairfield (156 employees at a collective $12.58 million) in total compensation.
Of the five top-paid administrators in Butler County, Fairfield City Manager Art Pizzano topped the list with a total compensation of $184,376.
Hamilton City Manager Joshua Smith ($172,200) was ahead of West Chester Twp. Administrator Judy Boyko ($144,654), Middletown City Manager Judy Gilleland ($127,654) and Oxford City Manager Doug Elliot ($126,186).
And Pizzano, Smith, Boyko and Gilleland are managing the highest populated communities in Butler County.
Smith, who started as Hamilton city manager in 2010, said the role of a city’s top administrator has “changed significantly” during his 12-year career in such roles.
“Due to funding constraints, more time is spent continually analyzing programs from an efficiency and effectiveness perspective,” Smith said. “I’ve also become more focused on economic development. If you don’t grow the top line, then you’ll continually be cutting programs and employees, which is not what residents or businesses want, but it’s a reality. So we need to figure out ways to increase revenues so we can offset that with less cutting of people or programs.”
As the chief executive officer of the city, Smith is responsible for a $345 million budget and oversight of 630 city employees. That’s a role that would be drastically different in terms of compensation for someone running a company of a similar size.
“In the private sector … what is that person being paid?” he said. “I’m sure it’s much more than what I’m being paid .”
Smith, who works about 60 hours weekly, said some weeks can end up well over that thanks to early mornings, late nights or weekend meetings.
While many perceive public sector salaries to be inflated, that’s not necessarily the case, according to Jos Raadschelders, professor of public administration for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.
“Generally, public sector salaries lag behind the private sector for comparable types of positions,” Raadschelders said. “A stereotypical idea exists that if you work in the public sector, you must not have been good enough for the private sector, and that in a way justifies that people in the public sector get a lower salary.”
As a consequence, executive salary levels for comparable positions are much lower than in the private sector, even as top-earning public sector jobs come with “quite some responsibilities.”
But competitive salaries in the public sector are not a possibility because they are financed not from profits made by a private company, but from public money.
“It’s taxpayers who will prevent getting public sector officials decent salaries because they don’t want to pay more taxes,” Raadschelders said.
What’s happened overall to compensation in America is “a dramatic widening” of what people at the highest end of the payroll make versus the average person, said Timothy White, professor of political science at Xavier University.
“If the city manager would be considered one of the top moneymakers in a community, that would be similar if they were a ballplayer,” White said. “Think about how much top level ballplayers and CEOs (make). The people who are at the top of their professions have seen far more rapid increases than people in the middle or the lower levels as wages have remained relatively stagnant for the general population for the last 30 to 40 years.”
Despite the comparison to company CEOs, most city managers “go in a totally different trajectory” than the private sector, White said.
“Most city managers go and get separate degrees,” he said. “They’re not getting an MBA, they’re getting a master’s of public policy or often a Ph.D. in public administration. They’re trained totally differently, so there is no easy parallel.”
White said many communities nationwide don’t have a city manager position. A 2013 Ohio Municipal League self-reporting salary survey supports that statement.
Of 503 of more than 900 Ohio municipalities that responded, only 73 of the 156 cities surveyed — or 46.8 percent — have a full-time city manager, and on average they earned last year about $105,000. In Ohio villages, of which 347 responded to the survey, 121 (34.9 percent) employed a full-time village manager.
The concept of city manager was something devised about a century ago to shift leadership roles away from political partisans and patrons to those who would develop expertise in how to run cities as a professional, not as a politician linked to their community, White said.
City managers are used by politicians in modern times as a “bogeyman” to deflect blame for unpopular decisions that city officials make and to eventually be run out of town, White said.
“That’s why they often have relatively limited tenures,” he said. “You don’t see many city managers lasting 10 to 20 years in communities.”
Ohio Municipal League spokesman Kent Scarrett said the top managers in a government demand top salaries.
“These are our municipalities’ chief executive officers,” he said. “These folks make the proverbial trains run on time. They’re highly recruited.”
Running a county, city or township is a “very technical position that demands a great amount of experience and a certain amount of aptitude,” Scarrett said. As technology increases, he said, so does the demand for high-caliber people, and they can command larger salaries.
“You get what you pay for,” he said. “They understand they may not receive the same financial benefits as in the private sector, but the rewards of public service outweigh the extra compensation they would otherwise receive.”
And people who serve in the public sector do so because “of a calling for public service,” he said.
“They’re highly sought after from companies because they work well with people and they are team leaders,” Scarrett said.
Gilleland said she’s never thought about leaving the public sector for the private sector.
“I’ve always been interested in working in local government. It’s my calling and I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said. “Working in local government, especially, you are able to affect people’s lives in a positive way, to bring about change that improves conditions and that is very satisfying and very rewarding in and of itself.”
But today’s political atmosphere can place a sizable target on the backs of these public figures and that could deter some people either staying in the public sector or making the move from the private to the public sector, Scarrett said. There has been an increase of a “grassroots activist mentality” from both sides of the political spectrum. While that gets more people involved in local community government and can hold public officials accountable, some people don’t want the hassles that come with being a public figure — where professional ridicule could bring personal ridicule.
“It’s very difficult to recruit qualified candidates,” Scarrett said. “They may have a desire for public service, but there may be side (political) issues.”
Scarrett said there is no trend that shows people wanting to serve in the public sector, “and if anything they’re being pushed out. They just would rather not do it and that’s too bad.”
Gilleland said the job of top administrator in government has changed over the years, in part due to the economy but mostly due to technology.
“The economy has made not only the position, but our daily lives a little more difficult, certainly. It’s much easier to manage during the times of wealth and prosperity and much more difficult to manage during a downturn of the economy,” said Gilleland, who’s been leading Middletown’s city administration since January 2008. “We’re used to, as a society, with texting and computing, and this technology has also affected how we work on a daily basis. It has made us more efficient on some levels and keeps us more occupied disseminating information on other levels.”
While people don’t necessarily want more information, they are looking to access it more immediately, Gilleland said. She said that’s neither good nor bad, “it’s just the world we live in right now.”
“And there’s so much more information available to us from a variety of sources than there was 30 years ago that my job has a large portion of time devoted to managing information,” Gilleland said.
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