Horiuchi retracts proposal on pay

Salt Lake County Councilman Randy Horiuchi officially retracted a proposed resolution Tuesday that would have given council members the ability to raise their salaries by reducing the pay of their administrative assistants.

The proposal had incited a flurry of negative public reaction and a fissure on the panel between those with opposing views on the matter. Democratic Councilman Jim Bradley voiced adamant opposition to the idea.

"The issue of what we pay ourselves is a totally separate issue than how we staff ourselves ... and we should keep them separate," Bradley said Tuesday. "I do feel it's way beyond our purview to talk about how much we pay ourselves. ... The people voted for a part-time council. ... They voted for a form of government with a strong mayor and a weak council."

Horiuchi's proposal was scheduled for a Tuesday morning hearing by the council's executive committee, but the meeting was nixed in light of public and council opposition to the idea, according to its supporters.

Though Horiuchi bailed out on his proposal before it had a chance for an up-or-down vote by the council, Bradley said he would like to have seen the issue come to a vote as a litmus test of how council members would weigh in under the scrutiny of public opinion. He ventured that the proposal would have been defeated, with the help of his personal thumbs-down.

While acknowledging the lack of support for his compensation plan, Horiuchi said continuing with the current system would ensure that only people in very specific, independent income circumstances would be able to run for county council, while average citizens would be marginalized from the process.

"If you're a regular, everyday Joe with an 8 to 5 job … the ability to do this job is impossible," Horiuchi said. "I wanted to set up a program in which someone could do that."

Councilman Michael Jensen said he likely would have voted against the proposal, but he expressed disappointment in the swirl of controversy that surrounded the proposal, some of which he said focused more on ancillary issues rather than the proposal itself.

Council Chairman Joe Hatch also registered disappointment with how the process of vetting the proposed changes progressed in the past two weeks, saying the issue of salary and compensation overshadowed the fundamental need to review the structure of the council's support staff.

"We've had this debate before … and we do not rise to the test of being able to debate the issues of compensation openly and honestly," Hatch said. "I'm sad that, to be quite frank, we're not mature enough to that point to have those kinds of discussions."

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