New salaries set for three elected posts

By Kevin O’Brien

Whoever wins the elections for county clerk, treasurer and register of deeds this fall will make significantly more money than what the positions currently pay after the Marathon County Board approved increased salaries on Tuesday.

It took over an hour of number-crunching and failed amendments Tuesday night before the board eventually voted 28-3 to approve raises as recommended by the Human Resources, Finance and Personnel (HRFP) Committee. Voting against the motion were supervisors Ron Covelli, Tim Sondelski and Matt Bootz.

As a result of the board’s action, the clerk’s salary will increase from $83,422 to $93,733 in 2025 (a 12.4 increase), the treasurer’s salary will go from $73,351 to $76,511 (a 4.3 percent increase) and the registrar’s salary will rise from $68,772 to $76,511 (an 11.3 percent increase. The people holding those positions will also see subsequent 3 percent annual raises in 2026, 2027 and 2028.

The cumulative fiscal impact of increasing the salaries will be $130,149 from 2025 to 2028.

Supervisor John Robinson, chair of the HRFP, repeatedly said his committee’s recommendation was based on three factors related to each position: “responsibility, accountability and exposure” (to public scrutinty). He urged the board to trust the county’s Human Resources department, which helped develop the committee’s proposal.

Supervisor Covelli made the first of several motions to amend the original proposal in a way that would boost the salary increases for the treasurer and the register of deeds and reduce the clerk’s initial raise by about $3,000.

Under Covelli’s proposal, which was ultimately defeated 6-25, the clerk would have made $90,930 in 2025, while the treasurer and register of deeds would both see their salaries increase to $83,351. When he first discussed his amendment at the board’s

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March 14 educational meeting, Covelli said he wanted to close the gap between the 4.3 percent raise for the treasurer and the 12.4 percent increase for the clerk.

“The one thing I would like to see the board do is to make it a little more equitable,” he said. “We talk about equity all the time.”

After a lengthy discussion at its March 13 meeting, the HRFP recommended base salaries in 2025 that are 10 percent higher than the minimum for county employees considered to be at the same pay grade as the three elected officials. The committee made its recommendation based primarily on a comparison of duties and responsibilities between the elected officials and comparable non-elected county employees.

County administrator Lance Leonhard said the county has long used internal pay comparisons to set the salaries of elected officials.

“It was consistent with the analysis we’ve done in the past,” he said.

The proposal developed by Human Resources director Molly Adzic and Leonhard placed the clerk in the “S” classification of employees, which includes the jail administrator, library director and the medical examiner. The treasurer and register of deeds were considered “P” class employees, which include business managers, public health supervisor and county forest administrator.

HRFP members were also presented with the salary ranges of municipal clerks and treasurers in the Wausau area, which mostly fell below their county counterparts. Adzic said the county’s “pay philosophy” is to compensate employees within a range that is “competitive…for similar work in our community and industry.”

However, many supervisors objected to using the salaries of surrounding municipalities as comparisons and questioned why Adzic and Leonhard did not initially present salaries from elected officials in the state’s 71 other counties (Leonhard eventually provided spreadsheets with salary data from all 72 counties).

The county’s current office-holders also told HRFP members that their jobs are much different than those at the municipal level.

County treasurer Connie Beyersdorf disagreed with the idea of comparing her position to municipal treasurers and said the average salary for county treasurer is $85,000 in Wisconsin.

“To be equitable to these positions, I think the salaries should be set based on positions that are comparable statewide in other counties,” she said.

County clerk Kim Trueblood said county and municipal clerks are an “apples and oranges” comparison. For example, she said each municipal clerk oversees the election in their own municipality, whereas the county clerk is responsible for handling election results for all of the county’s 61 municipalities.

“Municipal clerks are doing the same things, but on a much smaller scale,” she said.

Register of deeds Dean Stratz said there are no municipal equivalents for his position, so he recommended looking to other counties for comparisons – but with one caveat.

“Yes, we’re driven by statute, but people interpret statutes in different ways,” he said. “You’ve got 72 counties and 72 different ways of doing things.”

Leonhard noted that the duties of the three elected officials have changed in recent years, with the clerk now overseeing all of the county board and standing committee meetings. At the same time, he said a couple of property-related workers were transferred from the treasurer’s office to Conservation, Planning and Zoning.

By law, the board is required to set the new salaries before candidates for the three elected positions start circulating nomination papers on April 15.

Prior to Tuesday’s board action, the three elected officials had not seen an increase to their base salaries since 2017. Supervisors rejected a proposal to raise their pay in 2020.