At a recent Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting, a speaker from the floor suggested that commissioners pocket roughly $50,000 a year for their service. Several commissioners quickly pointed out that the number was off the mark.
To clear up the confusion, the Rhino Times requested the official compensation details from Guilford County.
According to the county, commissioner pay is set at $31,200 a year for regular members, $32,400 for the vice chair and $34,800 for the chair.
Of course there are other perks as well. It’s good to be the king and it’s good to be a commissioner.
Commissioners are eligible to sign up for county health insurance as soon as they’re elected. They don’t receive a travel stipend; however, the county (read: the taxpayers) does cover travel expenses for county related events when they are within the budget.
For instance, each year there are conferences of NACo, the national organization of counties, that holds events in nice locations. About two decades ago, the organization even held the large summer convention in Hawaii. The Rhino Times was one of only two mainland media outlets that sent a reporter to that event to see how many meetings the commissioners attended. The other outlet was a TV news station from South Carolina.
Guilford County traditionally budgets for commissioners to attend the annual NACo Legislative Conference in Washington and the annual North Carolina Association of County Commissioners conference. Any additional travel can be submitted for approval so long as the funds are available.
County issued cellphones, iPads and laptops are available to the commissioners who request them. Those devices have to be returned when their service ends.
Commissioners who serve at least 10 years – such as chairman for life Skip Alston – are eligible to remain on the county’s retiree health insurance plan.
These figures date back to a nearly 50 percent raise that the board quietly approved for itself three years ago. On June 17, 2021, the commissioners voted to increase their own salaries by $10,000 a year. The change was folded into the final adjustments to the county manager’s recommended budget and passed with no discussion and no comment.
That vote raised the chair’s pay to $34,800 a year, the vice chair’s to $32,400 and the other commissioners’ to $31,200. The changes took effect on July 1, 2021 and have remained in place ever since.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston said at that time that the adjustment was suggested by County Manager Mike Halford, who concluded that Guilford County commissioners were out of line with their peers across the state. The official description of the change was “Budget Ordinance change based on analysis of positions not reviewed in class and compensation study.”
In recent years Guilford County has conducted a number of salary studies comparing the pay of county employees to that of their counterparts elsewhere. And, as many longtime observers know, those studies almost always come back recommending higher pay for almost every position. As the Rhino Times noted back in 2021, it is difficult to recall any study that has ever concluded that a government position was overpaid.
The current compensation numbers are the ones approved in that 2021 vote, and they remain the official salaries for the Guilford County
