Linn County changed its government, too

CEDAR RAPIDS - Rural Linn County residents didn't sit still while the city of Cedar Rapids voted in a new form of government a decade ago.

In short order after the city vote, Alburnett farmer Dave Machacek led a successful petition drive and campaign to expand the Linn County Board of Supervisors from three to five members in 2006, and then he led a second petition drive and campaign in 2007 to have the five supervisors elected in individual districts.

Enlarging the Board of Supervisors to five members and electing them in districts was consistent with what voters in Cedar Rapids did in 2005 when they expanded the City Council from five to nine members, with five of the nine elected in districts.

That consistency makes sense. Fifty-eight percent of Linn County voters live in Cedar Rapids, according to county figures.

At the same time, though, the change in city government and county government diverged in a fundamental way.

Cedar Rapids went to a part-time City Council with part-time mayor, with modest pay and without health benefits. Council members initially earned $15,000 each a year, the mayor, $30,000 a year. The new council/manager government also replaced five, well-paid, full-time council members with a full-time professional city manager to run the day-to-day operation of the city.

For Linn County, there is no professional county manager singularly responsible for the day-to-day operation of the county. Instead, the five Linn County supervisors are full-time administrators - much like was the case in the old Cedar Rapids City Council setup - and each will be paid $100,862 with full benefits come July 1. The supervisors employ a director of policy and administration.

The status and pay of the supervisors have been the topic of debate as recently as 2013.

In the campaign in 2006 to change county government, Machacek said his vision for a five-member county board was that the five supervisors would be paid in total what the three supervisors had been paid or 60 percent of what each supervisor had been earning.

However, that never came to pass.

In March 2008, before supervisor elections that year, the three-member board of Linda Langston, Lu Barron and Jim Houser agreed to reduce the supervisor pay to 80 percent of what it would be when the five-member board first took office in January 2009.

In December 2008, after the election, the three members rescinded the salary reduction before it took effect.

In January 2009, a majority of the new five-member board initially did not agree to any salary reduction, a position that met with sufficient outcry that a group of local state Republican lawmakers introduced a bill in the state legislature to allow the recall of local officials.

The supervisors voted to call themselves 80-percent-time employees with 80-percent of what their salaries had been.

In 2013, the supervisors voted to be full-time employees with full-time pay.

Last week, Machacek said he was disappointed about the size of the supervisors' salaries and their decision to call themselves full-time employees.

At the same time, he said it has been a victory that the board now has five members elected in districts. He said that has allowed rural parts of Linn County to have some representation on the board. Back in 2006, when he began the campaign to go from three to five supervisors, all three supervisors lived in Cedar Rapids, he said.

'We did the right thing,” Machacek said.

Jeff Schott, director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Iowa, said counties in Iowa are different from cities, in part because counties elect a sheriff, county attorney, treasurer, auditor and recorder who manage their own employees. As a result, he said a professional county manager or a board of supervisors can't do what a city manager can, which is manage all of the jurisdiction's employees.

The supervisors do control the entire county budget.

According to Linn County, it will have the equivalent of 770 full-time positions on July 1, with 38 percent or 293 of them under the purview of the sheriff, county attorney, treasurer, auditor or recorder.