What is fair pay?

It's a simple question that often yields complex responses. Social scientists have developed theories. Researchers have gathered countless data. Companies have formed, books written, dissertations defended, debates organized and speeches delivered, all in an effort to answer this simple question.

Some county leaders believe there is an equally simple answer: imitate what other county departments are paying for similar positions. Well, that's one approach, but perhaps not the most enlightened one.

Yet how we determine fair pay could mark the difference in our ability to provide many of the programs and services now in danger of losing public funding. During last week's Miami-Dade County commission meeting, in which most commissioners voted to keep taxes flat, others lamented that the county won't have a few hundred million dollars for many of the programs and services they deem most essential.

FLAWED SYSTEM

Apparently, they've forgotten that they have about $7 billion for just that purpose. It's time to make some tough decisions about how the money is spent and, almost certainly, that decision will require us to consider the compensation of county employees.

The focus, however, should be less on the pay of particular people and more on the overall process that has created the current compensation structure: too-lenient or nonexistent salary guidelines; detrimental agreements with unions, and overly generous fringe benefits.

While the recently revealed double-digit raises to a handful of upper managers anger the public, it's the systemic pouring of public dollars to the rank-and-file that most rapidly empties our coffers. It's a problem not only at the county but at many local governments.

In Coral Gables, Vice Mayor Bill Kerdyk recently told The Miami Herald he was surprised when he heard about a police sergeant who made $81,000 a year, but comp time and annual leave boosted the pay to $164,000 a year before the officer retired. The higher salary was factored into the sergeant's pension, allowing him to get $125,000 a year for the rest of his life.

A police sergeant is a valuable public servant, no doubt, but is he that valuable?

In the private sector, historically the answer has been that if we can find an equally capable person to do the same job for less money, the answer is ``no.''

But in the public sector that premise is complicated by other realities.

FRESH APPROACH

Too often, local-government hiring is insular and prone to cronyism. Furthermore, government-employee turnover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is about a third that of the private sector. Generally, losing many employees is bad; but too little turnover is equally problematic, as it prevents the replacement of stale workers and trite ideas.

And fresh approaches, after all, may be what we now need most. That means not bluntly cutting pay across the board, as some have proposed, but requiring a holistic review of the entire pay structure, ensuring that compensation -- wages, pensions and benefits -- is in line with current and prevailing open-market rates.

It's one step toward going beyond temporarily resolving this year's budget problems, but also toward helping alleviate the fiscal hurdles we're sure to face in years to come.

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