Review leads to pay freeze for 2 county workers

The pay of two Flathead County Geographic Information System Department employees has been frozen as part of a realignment of the department and review of pay grades.

Several months ago, Flathead County Clerk Paula Robinson suggested the GIS Department be moved out from the purview of her office and become part of the county’s information technology department.

Robinson said the change was needed because of significant changes in GIS technology and a growing demand for complex information.

County commissioners signed off on the switch last month.

In keeping with the county’s policy of regularly reviewing job descriptions and pay grades — especially when changes occur in a department — Robinson, county Information Technology Director Vicky Saxby and county Human Resources Officer Tammy Skramovsky recommended salary schedule changes for some GIS positions.

Skramovsky said she reviewed a national GIS salary and function study and gathered information about GIS employees from other Montana counties as part of the  process.

The five-person GIS department today includes a manager, one analyst and three specialists. Before the reorganization, the configuration was a manager, an analyst, a survey specialist and two senior analysts.

“The senior analyst title wasn’t a good fit for what those employees did,” Skramovsky said.

Based on better-defined job descriptions, the name of those two positions was changed to specialist, resulting in three specialist positions in the department, she said.

Prior to the reorganization, the survey specialist position was a grade 14 and the two senior analyst positions were grade 16. Now, all three specialist positions are grade 15.

The end result is not a pay cut for the two employees in the former senior analyst positions, Skramovsky and county Administrator Mike Pence said. But the change does freeze their pay in the event commissioners approve any cost-of-living salary increases for county employees.

Should either of those positions become vacant, the new hire would come in at grade 15, not 16 as the current employees are at.

The changes result in a pay boost for the analyst position. At grade 14, step 5, the annual salary was $37,744. Now at grade 17, step 5, the pay is $43,492.

The county salary schedule contains six steps per grade. Step 5 pay typically comes in an employee’s third year of employment with the county.

The annual salary for grade 15, step 5 is $39,600. For grade 16, step 5, it’s $41,747.

The GIS manager position remains a grade 22, with a step 5 salary of $55,094. No grade change occurred for that position.

Freezing the pay of county employees whose grade level on the salary schedule changes as a result of more accurate job descriptions has occurred in other departments, Pence and Skramovsky said.

In this case, the changes occurred because job descriptions were revised to “match what people were actually doing,” GIS Program Manager Mindy Cochrane said.

The two former senior analysts “weren’t doing work that was in an analyst description,” Cochrane said.

She pointed out if the specialists’ position pay grade is raised to grade 16, it’s separated from the analyst position by just one grade and “an analyst does much more work.”

The review involved taking the new job descriptions and matching them up to a grade level and salary, Saxby said.

“It’s more a matter of getting pay aligned with what employees do and what they have been doing for quite a while,” she said. “Salaries had not been in line with what they’ve been doing for a while.”

“We saw people being paid more than they should have been, being paid for work they didn’t do,” Pence said.

Robinson reminded commissioners that when reviewing such recommendations, it’s important to look at the job and the position, not the personnel.

“We have two fantastic employees, but they do the same work as the other employee,” Robinson said.

“This was a tough decision to make,” Robinson said. “But wages in the beginning were set too high. I can only plead ignorance. We need to stick to the job descriptions.”

Skramovsky agreed. “It’s about being fair at a position.”

The GIS department was created in the early 1990s under the direction of the clerk’s office.

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.