That's what this KNS article suggests. The salary increase doesn't sound out of line considering Leuthold's qualifications and experience and new job duties.
The job description isn't made very clear, though, and the fact that it's a newly created position is interesting. "Reorganizations" frequently eliminate positions by consolidating duties instead of creating new positions.
At any rate, the situation highlights a couple of major problems in Knox County Government. One, County Commissioners and their family members who are also county employees create too many potential conflicts of interest. Even if everything is on the up and up, there will always be questions like this. Second, with very few exceptions, County Commission has little credibility regarding any ethics related issues after Jan. 31st, which compounds the first problem.
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Conflicts of Interest
I know how to solve all potential conflicts of interest questions... only allow each individual to collect one check from the city of county government... so you can either be an elected official and collect a check for your roll as an elected official or be a city or county employee and only collect a payroll check from the job you are hired to do... NOT BOTH!!!! This way there are no conflicts and no questions asked about promotions or jobs.
What's fishy is that the job
What's fishy is that the job wasn't posted publicly. Is this not similar to Steve Hall getting a job in his old office? I don't recall that administrative position being posted either.
advertise the job
"The job, which pays $55,453 per year, was not publicly posted, Sisk said."
He may be the most qualified for the job, but how about advertising for qualified candidates and doing a few interviews before making a hiring decision?
Hmmm...
Does this question of posting county jobs pertain to Leuthold's situation?
The way I read it, no "new job" was created per se. It appears to me that Leuthold just received a promotion and a raise in exchange for assuming additional duties?
I suppose another option for relieving the office manager of this supposedly excessive job responsibility she was carrying could have been to hire a part-time employee to perform those duties, but an additional cost of $17,000 (the amount of Craig's raise), or maybe more, would have resulted, either way.
I guess the focus of our attention, then, should be to ask whether that volume of duties the office manager had carried was truly excessive? That would reveal whether the raise was warranted in exchange for Craig's assuming them.
(I should offer this disclaimer: I generally tend to think of Craig as one of the few "good guys" on commission, because I find him to ask pointed questions and to do his research. I was surprised to learn how little he--and Sharon Cawood--earned in their county jobs, too, after the N-S published those amounts in February.)
Just guessing, here...
I think it speaks to the
I think it speaks to the larger issue of conflict of interest.