Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1901 — Fee and Salary Bill Killed- [ARTICLE]

Fee and Salary Bill Killed-

In the state legislature Friday the House killed the, general fee and salary bill on. which the fee apd salary commission has been working op for the past two yearsThe committee reported , against the bill and, their report was concurred in, only one member voting against the motion. W. A. Wilkins, secretary of the fee and salary that has spent two years preparing the bill, says the work will amount to nothing in vipw of the action of the House. The legislators, be explained, had the means , of remedying the situation, but had thrown it away. He attributed the defeat of the bills to political and selfish considerations. Every member, he declared, was anxious to reduce the salaries iu every county, except his own, audit the commission had been able to frame bills that would have met. with the approval of each individual in the Legislature then they might Pave become laws. Mr. Wilkins said that as a rule the county Recorders, auditors and clerks favored the bills, but that the sheriffs and treasurers who did not care to relinquish the graft they now enjoy were opposed to them. In support of his assertions that the situation regarding the salaries of county officers should be changed, he gave figures showing that the clerks, recorders, auditors, treasurers and sheriffs in the State receive a salary aggegating $1,060,900, and they have received in addition $1,307,047, thus making extra allowances greater than the salaries the law allowed. Fortynine. per cent, of the excess, he paid, had come from the, county fund, when it should have been derived from the fees of the office. The commission, he said, had met the conditions by establishing a fixed salary for the offices, based on the population of the counties, irrespective of the fees, v.. Mr. Manifold, chairman of the House committee Bn] fees and salaries, says the principal objection in the committee to the part of the bill regarding the salaries of county officers was that it discriminated against the sheriff in faVor of the auditor and the clerk; that it did not give enough salary tp officers in counties of under 10,000 population, and that it gave too much to officers in counties of over 50,000. There was decided opposition to’the part of the bill raising the salaries of State officers, except that the opinion was expressed that the Governor’s secretary and the secretary of the State Board of Health ought to have more money. Mr. Manifold says a bill to bring this about may be introduced.