No time for big raises

With gas going for $3.60 a gallon and milk just about as dear, a pay raise of 6 percent seems excessive. Exorbitant even.

This is especially so when the workers in question are in the government's employ, their wages supplied by taxpayers.

Taxpayers have a reasonable right to expect that when economic conditions compel them to cut back, government agencies will recognize that burden and spend accordingly.

It's too late to tinker with the 6-percent raise that Baker County commissioners approved for county employees represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Commissioners negotiated a five-year contract with SEIU last spring. Employees received a 6-percent increase on July 1, 2007, and they will get another 6-percent boost this July 1. Their raises will range from a minimum of 2 percent to 5 percent for each of the final three years of the pact.

To be fair, the county's SEIU-represented workers went without a raise for three straight years earlier this decade — although they received one-time cash bonuses of $1,000 from the county in December 2004.

The county's contract with the union does offset this year's 6-percent raise somewhat, by requiring employees to pay 5 percent of their health insurance premiums, even after accounting for that change the effective pay increase is 4 percent.

We'd wager, though, that plenty of private sector workers would gladly take 4 percent. Probably they wouldn't mind paying just 5 percent of their insurance premiums, either.

The economy has worsened since the county signed its contract with SEIU employees, which fact leads to our main point: We urge officials from Baker City, who are negotiating contracts with the city's three unions, to consider the county situation.

Firefighters, police officers and public works staff each are represented by a different union. All three current contracts expire June 30, and the Baker City Council probably will decide within the next two months whether to ratify contracts with each of the three unions.

This is not the year for government agencies to dole out pay raises that exceed the federal cost-of-living index.

That gauge of inflation rose by 2.8 percent during 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Rapidly rising fuel prices, among other factors, has pushed the running one-year average to 4 percent as of April 1.

City and county employees deserve raises — they pay taxes, too, after all, and they're not immune to record-high gas and food prices.

But in times like these, public officials have an obligation to tighten their purse strings.