Last Updated on June 4, 2024 by BVN
Overview: The Riverside County Board of Supervisors has tentatively approved generous salary increases for themselves and five other elected officials, drawing criticism from residents. The increases are unjustifiable, unreasonable, and unconscionable, as they are significantly higher than those received by county employees.
S. E. Williams
How much is too much? This is what many of us wondered recently when the Riverside County Board of Supervisors tentatively approved generous salary increases for themselves.
I am very critical of their decision, but I certainly can’t call them selfish because they also tentatively approved generous increases for no less than five other elected officials in the county. Now, that’s certainly what can be called “looking out for your peers.” I believe, however, they were just trying to couch their own greed for such outrageous salary hikes, by wrapping other beneficiaries around it hoping it might seem more palatable and less self-serving. It didn’t work.
“Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.”
Mwai Kibaki
Listed among the five side-kicks who also stand to benefit from the increases are some of our usual characters, Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin and his side-kick, Riverside County Sheriff, Chad Bianco, along with the county’s Auditor-Controller, Treasurer-Tax Collector and Assessor- Clerk-Recorder.
Meanwhile, as county supervisors continue with business as usual, county residents are left to stew over the board’s obnoxious, unanimous vote. Here is the stark, truth.
The wages of Riverside County employees will move one (1) percentage point in 2024 from 4.7% to 5.7% in alignment with civilian employees of the federal government in 2024.
The startling difference in salary increases between county employees and elected county officials is unjustifiable, unreasonable and unconscionable.
Supervisors currently earn between a low of $143,031.20 annually, (Supervisor Kevin Jeffries has refused salary increases for the last ten years according to the county website) to a high of $190,783.20 per year for others. This is more than 2.6 times the median household income of county residents of $72,730 in 2023.
No one begrudges supervisors a fair and professional salary, but it should be within reasonable ranges of those they serve.
In the meantime, here is what’s real. We have a board that is choosing “not to read the room” so to speak, and we can not ignore their greed. Should county residents stand up against it? Shame them and challenge them to lower the increased amount?
In England residents are taxed to pay toward the Sovereign Grant to cover many expenses of the royal family. Elected officials in Riverside County are not royals. They are elected to be servants of the people, not treat themselves as if they are entitled to some type of “funding for the Sovereign Grant,” afterall, they are not British Royals.
As always, I’m doing my best to keep it real.