Should Linn supervisors be full-time?

CEDAR RAPIDS - Most local elections are, to a degree, about resumes.

In the Linn County supervisor race in District 1, Democrat Jim Houser, the longtime former supervisor, is running against Realtor Dennis Peterson, the Republican, and an independent candidate, former two-term Cedar Rapids City Council member Tom Podzimek.

In the supervisor race in District 5, John Harris, the Republican and one-term incumbent supervisor, is up against Becky Shoop, the Democrat and a Linn County employee and a county deputy auditor.

Resumes aside, though, one of the first questions asked the candidates at public forums last week was this one: Does Linn County need five, full-time supervisors who each earn $98,885 a year plus benefits?

The upcoming Nov. 4 vote will be the first time Linn County voters get a chance in a general election to weigh in on the Linn County Board of Supervisors' decision in 2013 to go from 80 percent time to full time, with an accompanying increase in pay.

The five-member board, on a 4-1 vote, made the shift in February 2013, three months after the last supervisor election.

At the time, former Iowa Rep. Renee Schulte, a Republican in Cedar Rapids, attended the supervisors' meeting to tell them that the expectation among Linn County voters has been that the supervisors should make less per supervisor as a five-member board than they had made as a three-member board before 2009.

A decision to restore the supervisors' status and pay to 100 percent time just four years later will have 'consequences” in upcoming county elections, Schulte said then.

The Nov. 4 vote is the first general election to see if she is correct.

This election cycle, a total of nine candidates have competed for the two supervisor seats on the ballot. In District 1, Houser, a sheet-metal worker and Realtor, defeated three opponents in the Democratic primary in June.

And in District 5, Harris, a retired Rockwell Collins manager and former Palo mayor and City Council member, defeated a challenger in the Republican primary that month.

Of the five candidates on the Nov. 4 ballot and the four who lost in the primary, seven have said Linn County needs five, full-time supervisors with full-time pay.

An eighth candidate, Shoop, who is challenging incumbent Harris in District 5 on Nov. 4, isn't calling to change the full-time setup. But she said she does not think the five current supervisors work full-time for full-time pay.

She has said she will document her work hours and report the results if elected.

Then there is the ninth candidate, former Cedar Rapids council member Podzimek, who owns a small construction company.

'We don't need five full-time supervisors,” Podzimek said bluntly. 'This is a good time to look at the structure of county government because most people believe that compensation for supervisors is out of touch with the electorate.”

Podzimek said he wants to see Linn County move to part-time supervisors with a full-time professional county manager, just as the city of Cedar Rapids did in 2005 when voters by a large majority approved a shift from five full-time council members to nine part-time ones with a professional city manager.

Podzimek said the city of Cedar Rapids has made great progress since the change of government that the city otherwise would not have in the day when each full-time council member also oversaw a particular piece of city government.

The city, he said, not only has recovered from the 2008 flood, but it has implemented policies on economic development, sustainability, bicycle friendliness and environmental design standards that would not have happened in the city's former form of government.

District 5 incumbent Harris said his nearly four years in office have taught him that the five Linn County supervisors have plenty to do as full-time employees with full-time pay. He said the supervisors are both legislators and executives, and as executives they oversee the county departments of budget and finance, secondary roads, planning and development, risk management, conservation and parks, human resources, facilities, community services and veterans affairs, he said.

'When we had three supervisors, they had to be a jack of all trades and masters of none,” Harris said.

He said a five-supervisor setup allows each of the supervisors to focus on certain departments and services, With five supervisors, each supervisor can develop relationships with supervisors in other counties in Iowa and across the country, he said.

In the District 1 race, Petersen disagreed with Podzimek and said Linn County voters decided they wanted five supervisors, and he said, Linn County is Iowa's second largest county so the county needs full-time supervisors with full-time pay.

Five makes for more decision-makers, more people to cover the county's needs, he said.

Houser agreed with Petersen in the District 1 race.

Houser, who served on the Board of Supervisors for 19 years until Harris defeated him in 2010 by 166 votes out of total of 16,778 votes, said Linn County needs five, full-time supervisors in a county with more than 800 county employees. In addition to managing several departments, the supervisors also control the budgets of the offices of the other county elected officials, sheriff, auditor, treasurer, recorder and county attorney, he said.

Houser said supervisors also spend time working with state and federal lawmakers to try to make sure that Linn County's issues get addressed at the Statehouse and in Congress.

At a League of Women Voters Linn County forum last week for the Harris-Shoop race in District 5, Harris recounted his dealings earlier in the day with five constituents on five different matters ranging from weeds to burning leaves to a boundary dispute, to make the point that he works plenty of hours as a supervisor.

Two nights later in the League's forum for the Houser-Petersen-Podzimek race in District 1, Podzimek said a county customer-service representative could have handled the citizen matters on which Harris had reported spending his time.

In another back-and-forth, Houser said supervisors sit on a number of local boards, including the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency board and the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization's board, and Podzimek said part-time Cedar Rapids council members sit on those two boards, too.

Harris said that the move to return the Linn supervisor job to full-time with full-time pay made the job attractive enough for nine candidates this year to compete for two seats. No one really challenged the three incumbent supervisors in 2012 when the job was 80 percent time, he said.

Podzimek said the Cedar Rapids City Council has had a diverse group of people run for the part-time council and win election to it.

Back in spring 2013, two Linn County residents, Richard Bice and Michael Engelken, were displeased enough with the supervisors' decision to make themselves full-time employees with full-time pay that the two launched a petition drive. The goal was to obtain some 10,000 signatures to force the supervisors to look to make a change in county government, perhaps to a setup with part-time supervisors and a full-time professional county manager.

County Auditor Joel Miller, Engelken's brother-in-law, also supported the petition drive.

It is a drive that has sputtered far short of its goal, Miller said Tuesday.

At last week's voter forum, Houser credited the Farm Bureau in Linn County with prompting a referendum in 2006 to expand the Board of Supervisors from three members to five and a second referendum in 2007 to have each of the five supervisors represent a district and be elected only by voters in the district.

In 2008, the three-supervisor board passed a resolution to cut supervisor pay by 20 percent once the five-member board took office in 2009. After the 2008 election, the supervisors changed their mind.

However, by February 2009, the supervisors shifted gears after public complaints and agreed to cut pay by 20 percent and to become 80-percent-time employees. In February 2013, after the November 2012 election, the current Board of Supervisors decided - on a 4-1 vote - to return to full-time status with an accompanying pay raise.

Supervisor Brent Oleson voted no, saying he had not campaigned on the issue in the just-concluded election and so couldn't vote for it.