Every four years, the county commissioners have to gather for a special meeting to set salaries for elected officials.

To ensure the commissioners can’t just give themselves a raise, the wages set during that meeting Wednesday don’t go into effect until the next board of commissioners is seated in January 2024.

So the offices up for review — that will be up for election next year — include the commissioners, auditors, treasurer, register and recorder and sheriff.

Past determinations made at these meetings have been rather scattershot. Last time, the commissioners voted themselves no increase but others 1% and 2% increases.

Commission Ben Kafferlin said the county code states that the increases must be on a percentage basis and “applied equally” to all elected officials except for the office with the lowest salary (coroner).

He called the failure to comply with that provision the last two times as a “technical violation of the law.” Citing the original enactment of these salaries decades ago, he projected that the salaries should be in the range of $64,000 to $65,000 annually.

All of the salaries for 2023 for these elected offices were well under $60,000.

Kafferlin said he is in a “bind” between fixing “what previous boards of commissioners broke” or applying the percentage increase equally across the board.

Several make more than the county commissioners.

“The CEOs of the county are in most cases making less than the row offices which is clearly contract to the law originally,” Kafferlin said. “I don’t make that case for myself. If we are going to attract quality commissioner candidates next year” the position should pay a commensurate executive salary.

One of the complicating factors is that not all of the elected offices in the county are up next year.

The confusion there centered around the prothonotary and sheriff with a disconnect over whether those individuals were elected to finish unexpired terms or elected to a full four-year term. The question relative to salaries was whether or not to include the prothonotary in next year’s increase, even though the office is not up for election.

Kafferlin said fulfilling partial terms is “poor practice” as the “law says the next municipal election when a position needs to be filled. We have to base this on the law and not on other practice.”

He proposed — and said the state recommends — a six-year salary schedule updated every two years. The board was advised to include the prothonotary with next year’s proposed increase.

Ultimately, the board approved a 3% increase.

According to information provided the county, the 3% increase that was approved will take the commissioners salary from $57,178 in 2023 to $64,454.54 in 2027; treasurer from $57,623.45 to $64,855.70; register and recorder from $55,707.70 to $62,699.51 with approximately $5,000 to $6,000 extra for clerk of orphan’s court responsibilities and sheriff from $57,622.41 to $64,854.53.