1. Given that there’s a serious economic recession and given that many — if not most — defined benefit plans are in trouble across the nation, explain your position on the county’s new retirement plan. 2. Do you have any numbers on what such a plan will cost taxpayers in 10 years, 20 years? If you don’t have the numbers, why not and why should we believe your projections?
Yes I am for a Defined Benefit plan for Fayette County employees.
The defined benefit plan is expected to save the County taxpayer around $550,000 per year in retirement plan payments, while giving the county employees a guaranteed retirement payment of a maximum of 45% of their salary each year during retirement. This plan was specifically designed to result in the County’s payment to the defined benefit plan being no more than the 4% the county is currently paying into the defined contribution retirement plan. The County’s part of the proposed DB plan contribution is 3.8% of employee compensation per year, which is slightly less than the 4% that it is now committed and contributed to the defined contribution retirement plan.
I should point out that this Board leadership obtained the, free services of the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia retirement specialist to compute the 3.8% and then hired an independent actuary to verify that this amount was reasonable. That actuary’s report stated that there was only a 1% probability the average contribution to the plan would be greater than 3.8% and there was a 75% probability the highest amount the county would be required to pay in any one year was 4.6%. A 4.6% contribution would be .6% greater than the County is now paying into the defined contribution pension plan and equates to about $192,000. The leadership of this Board felt it prudent to risk $192,000 per year against a savings of $550,000 per year. In the remote 1% chance we have to pay the extra six tenths on one percent (.6%) we still have a ne t savings $358,000 per year. Fayette citizens should also be informed that, in the unlikely event the county has to pay the extra .6%, it will come from a reduction in the amount committed as a match under the defined contribution, 403(b) plan. In other words, there is a total amount to be committed to the employee for retirement purposes and some of that total will be placed in the DB and some into 403(b). If the DB goes up the 403(b) goes down proportionately. This fluid allocation between the two plans insures the County’s liability under the DB plan is manageable. But in addition to that, the leadership of this Board has also determined that in the very, unlikely event that the DC contribution is fully utilized to make up for some calamity of gigantic proportion in the DB plan, any additional contribution to the DB plan will be shared 50% each between employee and employer. I think it is reasonable to say that an actuarially computed 3.8% contribution which is backed by a full floating reserve of 66% of that amount is an extremely conservative position for this Board to take. All these actions would have been obvious if those crying deceit would have taken the time to attend the many open and advertised meetings of the retirement study committee which labored for a year with their analysis.
There are cries of comparison between the Henry County retirement plan and the proposed Fayette County retirement plan and the rallying cry of those trying to brand this Commission as going to “bankrupt the county”? I am only speculating when I suppose that such comparisons which are known to be untrue, or can be readily be debunked as untrue, are only political posturing and fear mongering. While I can’t answer as to the motivations of those involved, I can point out that the Henry plan was designed to pay all existing employees a retirement benefit for every year they had ever worked for Henry County. This is not a part of the Fayette Plan, which only pays for years worked after the plan is implemented. The difference is vast and further shows the leadership of the Fayette Board is
3. Again, economic realities have forced many private sector businesses and families to forego raises and increased spending. Are county workers — with big new raises — exempt from what the rest of us are facing? Defend (or condemn) big raises using taxpayers’ money at such a time as this.
Compensation and classification studies are normal in the course of business. Fayette County has routinely implemented the results of such studies about every three to four years for as far back as 1985. Such studies were implemented in 1985, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2001. In 2001, the prior commission leadership felt it important to remove the requirement that a wage and comp study be performed on a regular basis and removed the requirement that a study be done; inserting, instead, language indicating studies would only be performed at the discretion of the Board. The leadership on that Board never again felt the need to do a wage and compensation study.
New Board leadership in 2007, in performing our own review of employment issues, noticed: 1) The turnover rate in county employees which had grown to an all time high of 19% in 2006, with public safety turnover rates hovering at near 30%; 2) Low employee morale which permeated the entire spectrum of County employees; 3) There were disparities in pay for positions of similar duties and responsibilities when compared between departments within the County; 4) Rumors that compensation for some positions was grossly under that of similar positions in surrounding jurisdictions; 5) Rumors that the prior Board of Commissioners changed the comparable jurisdictions when the last compensation and classification study was performed to some of their own choosing; 6) Dissatisfaction with the prior study because the reviewers were reportedly explicitly instructed t o omit certain positions from their study.
Knowing that items one and two were potentially a result of items 3, 4, 5, and 6, the majority of this Board, determined an independent compensation and classification study was the most effective and efficient method of settling those issues. That study was performed by personnel from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia on an independent and unbiased basis. These people perform hundreds of these studies for all sizes of government and are considered experts in this area. The study was designed to determine if the job descriptions for each position adequately reflected the job responsibilities of that position and to determine if the ultimate job description was fairly and adequately compensated. The results of the UGA study was presented to this Board of Commissioners and we were told that this study, if implemented at its most conservative level (the less expe nsive level), would place Fayette County employees squarely in the middle range of comparability with other similar governments as determined by the UGA study.
In 1998 when the ARC compensation and classification study was implemented, employees received a total compensation increase of 12.13%. In 2001 when the MGT compensation and classification study was implemented employees received a total compensation increase of 10.88% which was a mere four years after they received a 12.13% raise. Those two studies, in the span of four years, resulted in a total 23.01% increase in employee compensation for the two years cited. The current UGA study, which by the way, included significant input from the vast majority of employees, results in a total compensation increase for the June 2008 ending budget year of 7.86%, 3.3% of which was the annual cost of living raise given to all employees. I would be remiss if I did not add the 2.28% included in the 2009 budget we are currently discussing and the 1.66% that is to be added in the 2010 budget. Together these three total 11.80%, but are reflective of a six year span of time. When compared to 23.01% the prior Board granted over the 6 year span from 1996 through 2001 this adjustment is remarkably low. When you also consider that the employees received no performance pay for the 2008 budget year, which has traditionally been at the 2.5% level, the current UGA adjustment is even more unremarkable. Further, if you then realize that there is no cost of living (COLA) raise for employees – traditionally about 3% - in the 2009 budget (their compensation was adjusted to market with the study implementation) you begin to see a completely different picture than is portrayed in the media and letters to the editor by Mr. Dunn and Mr. Pfeiffer.
Most statisticians agree figures can lead to great distortions of fact when taken out of context and without reasonable knowledge of the underlying situation. For that reason, using percent analysis of raises in either of these situations is somewhat meaningless. Although an 11.80% raise may seem like a tremendous amount, most citizens don’t realize that 74% of the county workforce earns under $50,000 per year and 55% earn between $20,000 and $40,000 per year. The average increase in compensation for employees who make over $50,000 per year was about 1.5%. The average increase for employees making under $30,000 per year was about 14.22%. And, the average increase for the bulk of the workforce who earns $30,000 to $50,000 per year was a whopping 3.37%. As can be seen, the bulk of the raises went to those employees who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum and are most affected by the ris ing costs of living – think about simply driving to work with higher petroleum costs.
But still, the questions that most taxpayers want to know the answer to are: 1) does the implementation of the study recommendations result in improvement of any of the problems, whether perceived or real, existing prior to the study? And, 2) how do we pay for the implementation of the study?
As to the effect of the study…….Based on what I observe and what I am told: Employee morale is at a high point and the UGA study eliminated all discussions of bias in the study itself. These observations and discussions are supported by a look at the employee turnover rate which has declined from an historic 2006 high of 19% to 14% in 2007 and, remarkably…a current rate of 3.88%. A stable workforce results in effective and efficient service to the public. To put this in financial perspective, training costs for a single public safety position has been estimated at seventy to one hundred thousand dollars – not including the additional supervisory time required to monitor the trainees. A dramatic reduction in turnover rate translates into a dramatic reduction in training costs, with increas ed safety to the public as an added bonus. Elimination of 20 “trainees” per year would result in about a million dollar savings in training costs.
As to the method of paying for the study…..As mentioned, lower training costs certainly are a contributing factor, but more efficient service is provided by better trained (retained) personnel resulting in the need for more personnel to be actually reduced. Nonetheless, a significant contributing factor has somewhat been pushed under the rug and goes back to three or four actions the leadership of this Board of Commissioners took in the May through July time frame of 2007. Those three actions were: Put the County health insurance out for proposals, eliminating the “consultant” that the previous Board leadership had used; Put the county property and casualty insurance out for proposals, again eliminating the “consultant” that the previous Board leadership had used; And, not only eliminating the incessant lawsuits between the Board and the Sheriff, a staff attorney was retained to handle routine legal matters that the former county attorney was being highly paid to perform. These three or four items alone led to savings to the county taxpayers of around 1.2 million dollars per year. $1,200,000.00 is a lot of money and the leadership of the current Board believed paying consultants or letting insurance companies take advantage of us without any serious competition was a poor way to utilize taxpayer resources.
4. What specifically will you as a Republican do to ease taxpayers’ burdens when you are elected?
Maintain a conservative budget, and not to increase the millage rate. For example, I am satisfied this years budget was derived in a cooperative spirit and is a fiscally sound representation of what can be accomplished when we all work together. The mere fact that we are able to reduce our budget should be an indication of the phenomenal job this administration is doing; especially when we hear and read that other governments, some a fraction of our size, are wrestling with million dollar deficits. Our ability to react and respond to the changing economic environment in which we find ourselves today is evidenced by this budget and its overall 6% reduction over last year. To accomplish all this Board has undertaken within this budget and still be able to maintain a 6% reduction in budget is nothing short of remarkable.
5. Suppose I’m a real estate developer who wants to rezone 100 acres in the center of the county to double its current residential density. How will you evaluate my request, step by step? And how would your governing philosophy incline you to vote on my request? (If you can’t answer, why should anybody vote for you?)
The Zoning Department regulates development in the County by implementing both the Land Use Plan and the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan prepared by the Planning Department. The Zoning Department's goal is promote the physical and economic development of Fayette County and foster the use and enjoyment of property within the unincor porated areas of the County in a manner consistent with adopted plans, regulations and policies, and effective management practices. The zoning process is very technical and often complex situations. The process is more detailed than you would think. The re-zoning of a property requires a lot to be looked at. For example, the actual what type of re-zoning that is being requested, variances, preliminary plats, final plats, landscape plans and inspection. The need to have zoning is to regulates development in the unincorporated areas of Fayette County by administering the following ordinances adopted by the Board of County Commissioners: Zoning Ordinance, Development Regulations, Subdivision Regulations. After all of this information has been compiled then the rezoning goes before the public two times. After all of those steps have be en complied with it will then come before the County Commission. Again this is the time when I as a commissioner will go to the site personally and hear from concerned citizens. After all of that hard work that many people have put there in-put into the rezoning the Board of Commissioners will vote on it.
6. How would you describe your political philosophy? Are you more conservative, more libertarian, or more moderate to centrist in your political views?
Committed to fundamental fiscal conservativeness.
7. In what area of service is the county most falling short right now? What would you do about that failure?
I feel that the county is not falling short in any of it’s services that are being provided to our citizens. However, there are areas that we can improve on. With a county as great as Fayette County, I think we should be providing more quality of life enhancements. We need to provide more performing and visual arts, community center and recreation improvements. I will continue to support these needs and work the best I can to find ways to support them. We will need to look at Public/Private Partnerships, SPLOST.
8. Why are you better for Fayette County than your opponent?
I feel that since becoming a County Commissioner I have showed that I am independent, no special interest groups, no good ole boy club, and no hidden agenda’s. I have been told by many of the other county elected officials that the corporation between the Fayette County Board of Commissioners has been the best that it has ever been in 18 years. This corporation shows. I feel that had we not had the cooperation that exists to the budget process would have been very hard. As to the development of this year’s budget, this Board instructed the administration (that would be Mr. Krakeel and the finance staff) to seek cooperation from all department heads and constitutional officers to diligently review their budgets for items or services that they had included as “may need” instead of “must have”. The cooperative spirit in which they responded is evident in the staff’s comments and in the fact that there were few appeals to the amounts initially established in administrative review. In fact, this Board has received letters lauding the fact that the budget process was the smoothest in recent history and commends Mr. Krakeel and staff on its thoroughness, thoughtfulness and diligence in the process. It has been alluded to by Mr. Pfeiffer that there was undue pressure put on departments and constitutional officers to pare their budgets, purportedly to have enough money to implement the UGA study. I want to openly state my full support for Mr. Krakeel and the finance staff and categorically deny any undue pressure was put on any of the department heads and I am sure Mr. Dunn and Ms. Wells will attest to the fact that undue pressure put on constitutional officers often backfires.
Additionally, I will openly speculate that one of the reasons the budget process was smooth is because it was done openly and with an element of trust in the division directors, department heads and constitutional officers to deliver a budget request only for the resources they needed to deliver services to Fayette citizens for which they were charged. I think this Board’s willingness to evaluate changes during the ensuing year and not simply reject a request because it “wasn’t in the budget” is a huge contributing factor in the trust that is obviously included in these budget requests. I am satisfied this budget was derived in a cooperative spirit and is a fiscally sound representation of what can be accomplished when we all work together. The mere fact that we are able to reduce our budget should be an indication of the phenomenal job this administ ration is doing; especially when we hear and read that other governments, some a fraction of our size, are wrestling with million dollar deficits. Our ability to react and respond to the changing economic environment in which we find ourselves today is evidenced by this budget and its overall 6% reduction over last year. To accomplish all this Board has undertaken within this budget and still be able to maintain a 6% reduction in budget is nothing short of remarkable. Being a County Commissioner has given me the opportunity to see and appreciate all the many volunteers we have in our community. My passion to serve others has been expressed in my work, while also striving to make individuals feel appreciated, valued and listened to . Today, there is a new energy and great achievements are being made on the county commission. In the past, there was infighting among the departments, the city’s and other constitutional officers. Now, we/(I) approach issues facing us in a new way . Our communication and cooperation is now providing long lasting benefits to all Citizens. In this day and time we need to come together and work as one great Fayette County.
9. What are the biggest three challenges facing Fayette right now? What will you do about these three challenges?
The challenges facing Fayette are many. Water is very important, Fayette County is coming into a new era of water usage. Since the 70’s we have been fighting for Lake McIntosh. Soon A dam construction permit will be approved. This lake will be larger than 688 acres with 1.8 billion gallons of water and an anticipated completion date of two years. This water source will provide our community enough water beyond our county build out. We also need to provide more education on water conservation. For the past five years the Fayette County Development Authority has been faced with running out of land. With no availability of commercial or industrial acreages to develop, we will be face with a burden. This type of development is vital in keeping a more balanced tax base. Our county will need to rely on a Public/Private Partnership in order to move forward with finding additional sites. Currently the sales tax revenues have greatly declined. Foreclosures have left our neighbors and friends leery of what’s to come. In spite of it all our County is still a great place to work and live. As your Commissioner I will do my best to keep the traffic moving. Conservation of water and green space will always be my priority. By maintaining our image of excellence we will continue to attract good jobs and families.