The Plumas County Board of Supervisors authorized a comprehensive salary study July 1 to review the current wages designated for all county positions. The study, to be conducted by Regional Government Services, will cost up to $154,000 and is expected to be completed by March 2026.
The county has not done a complete review of employee salaries for several years, said Sara James, deputy county counsel who is serving as human resources director on a temporary basis. Salaries for Plumas County’s workforce are not comparable with those of similar counties, James said.
With only two of five positions currently filled, the HR department does not have the staff to do the study in-house, James said. RGS, which holds contracts with numerous California government entities under joint powers agreements, will assist the HR department with “the heavy lifting” to start the process, she said.
This is an opportunity to look at all employee positions, including department heads, and review the salary and work requirements established for each one, said County Counsel Joshua Brechtel. The board of supervisors may then decide which categories of the workforce to prioritize for a wage review, he said.
“This is just a proposal to outline the process,” he said.
The review will be data driven, gathering information about wages and job descriptions, James said. Once the research is complete, the board of supervisors will decide how to apply the information.
Currently the supervisors don’t know where the county stands in comparison to comparable counties’ salaries, said Supervisor Mimi Hall. “I think we should know,” she said.
Past salary survey looms over current process
Rick Foster, who regularly attends county board meetings, cautioned the supervisors to examine the information they receive carefully. “I prefer that this not be controversial afterwards,” he said.
That was one of several references to a 2022 study of department heads’ salaries recommended by former Human Resources Director Nancy Selvage. The board approved her recommendations, increasing the wages of several county positions that are still in effect. The largest was 43% for the HR director herself, resulting in a felony conviction for obtaining money under false pretenses.
The 2022 study was “a very specific salary study” limited to department heads, said James. “We won’t go into the methodology,” she added.
The supervisors approved her recommendation unanimously. Initially, they set December as a deadline. Patty Howard, an RGS senior advisor and lead for this project, said concluding the salary review by late December is “a very ambitious timeline.”
“This is a complex and large study” that will require information from a variety of agencies, she said. She committed to returning information to the supervisors by the end of March, the first quarter of 2026.
The supervisors did not solicit bids from other companies for the contract. That is in keeping with the county’s purchasing policy, Brechtel said. Because RGS is a not-for-profit organization, county officials were not required to request and review other bids, he said.
The process will be transparent and require RGS to comply with all of the public information mandates of the Brown Act, said Supervisor Tom McGowan. “This is really to establish apples to apples. We’re going to get a much better process for making decisions,” he said.
Reporting fines and fees
In other board considerations, Foster, a self-described “county watchdog,” has for months been asking the supervisors to hold a public agendized discussion of fines and fees paid by county departments. He got his moment July 1.
Foster has reported that his public records requests have revealed a total of $512,326 for the five years ending in December 2024. For context, amortized over five years, that represents less than 0.17% of the county’s 2025 general fund budget, which was $59.3 million. Not all of the reported fees involved county general funds.
Hall thanked Foster for his commitment to fiscal transparency but said the process has had a demoralizing effect on county workers.
“I want to be your partner in better government, but I don’t want to do it in a way that doesn’t respect the staff who are doing the work, especially in departments that are understaffed,” Hall said.
Some of the funds are late fees for bills not paid in time. In the last 18 months the auditor’s department has taken steps to make sure that all invoices are paid on time, said Auditor-Controller Martee Nieman.
“We’re hoping that we have things in place now that we won’t have an issue with penalties and interest,” she said.
Most of the fees Foster reported did not affect the county general fund, said Hall. Most came from state-funded programs for the social services, public and behavioral health departments. In most cases the county did not have the technology or the staff to complete the programs and was forced to return the funds, she said.
“I don’t think anyone’s trying to hide anything,” Hall said.
Foster said his goal was to bring finance issues to the board’s attention that they might not know about. He could not find the penalties he unearthed reported to or by the supervisors anywhere in the public record, he said.
“My intent was not to punish departments, not to point fingers at departments, not to cause disharmony. My intent was to make sure that we know the public knows, and the board of supervisors is paying attention,” he said.
Supervisor Jeff Engel said he was aware of the penalties Foster reported.
“I think through your efforts and through our discussions, virtually everybody’s on high alert not to overlook or delay a specific timeline, because everyone’s paying attention,” Engel said.
Hall suggested a system that “lets us know when we have to pay our money.” Nieman said her department had discussed a possibility of adding a line in the chart of department accounts that would categorize penalties or interest due to late payments for tracking purposes. Doing so, however, would involve a complicated process, she added.
The discussion did not lead to any current or intended action, but put the supervisors “working in the right direction,” said Board Chairman Supervisor Kevin Goss. He thanked Foster for bringing the issues forward.
Source: Plumas Sun
