Wednesday, July 17, 2002

I see that Mike Wheat is trying to make a campaign issue of the pay system for our county commissioners. It might be useful for the voters to hear "the rest of the story."

The Wheat campaign director wrote in The Citizen last week that "back in 1993, the Fayette County Commission created a system in which they each receive pay raises automatically whenever the state gives superior court judges a raise." Since absolutely all our commissioners have been replaced since then, it's not the current officials who did it.

So who did it? Well, the very same guy who's trying to undo it, namely Lynn Westmoreland. Here's what happened.

In 1992, people familiar with our court system realized our Fayette County citizens badly needed a state court. To get one, we needed the endorsement of the county commissioners. In an effort to interest the commissioners to do the right thing, I authored a 17-page report for their benefit which explained just about everything there was to know about state courts. Buried in footnote 25 of that report was the suggestion that the state court judge might be paid a salary that was a percentage (like 85 percent) of a superior court judge's salary, as was done in many other counties with a state court.

Dan Lakly, who was then a county commissioner and received the report, got himself elected to the Georgia legislature in the fall of 1992 as a representative from Fayette County. Lynn Westmoreland was no commissioner but he too was elected as the other representative for Fayette County. These two then worked to help Lakly's old buddies on the commission to get a pay change, through a "local law," where the commissioners would get a percentage of a superior court judge's salary.

They most likely got the idea from my report, and Westmoreland went along. (Meanwhile, Lakly opposed our getting a state court, but we eventually got one anyway.)

Local laws are always approved as a matter of "courtesy" when local legislators are unanimous about it. In 1993, our sleepy press reported nothing to the public about the commissioners' pay formula, as our local reporters don't seem to know about local laws and don't watch for them.

Of course, the logic of starting from judges' pay to get to the commissioners' pay is questionable. The time to question it was in 1993, as there were widespread feelings then that our state judges' pay was low and would soon have to be raised. It is a small issue. The important point is that Westmoreland, who was definitely in the loop in 1993, now has the nerve (along with Mike Wheat) to try to put the monkey on the current commission's back.

The current commissioners are not to blame for the current system. Westmoreland is. The current commissioners cannot change the local law, and neither can Mike Wheat if he's elected. If he is reelected, Westmoreland can try to change it if he can secure the unanimous consent of the legislators representing Fayette County, where he does not even live but he was instrumental in getting the law we have now.

It bothers me that Mike Wheat is not telling the whole truth about Westmoreland's role in passing the law in the first place. As Fayetteville mayor in 1993, Wheat had to be aware of what was going on in the county's political arena. Why has it taken him nine years to make an issue of what Westmoreland and Lakly did in 1993?

By the way, setting the pay of elected officials through a sound formula is not a bad idea at all, and even state legislators like Westmoreland get automatic raises whenever state employees get one. Social Security recipients get cost-of-living adjustments every year, too. I am not sure that comparing commissioners to judges is all that appropriate, but as political issues go, I suspect Wheat is barking up the wrong tree, and using the wrong dog too.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County

cypaquin@msn.com

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