Supervisors very generous with raises to sheriff, themselves

Lots of memories about Post-Star building on Lawrence & Cooper

By Ken Tingley

This past summer, Warren County supervisors stood up to the sheriff. He was demanding a raise of $18,875. Keep in mind Sheriff Jim LaFarr was making over $120,000 at a time. That’s a pretty good salary in these parts.

What was surprising was the supervisors negotiated raises for most of the non-union leadership in law enforcement and the county jail. It raised their salaries higher than LaFarr. It almost seemed like they were sending LaFarr a message.

This past Friday, the supervisors approved a raise in next year’s budget that gives LaFarr a 15 percent raise.

Coincidentally, that 15 percent raise adds more than $18,000 to LaFarr’s salary. So, he got his raise after all.

Here’s one thing I learned as an manager of a newspaper. If everyone is given the same percentage raise, the people earning the most will get the largest raises. The gap in their paychecks will continue to widen.

In this case, the supervisors agreed to 2.85 percent raise to union employees.

An employee earning $40,000 a year gets a raise of $1,140 dollars or about $22 a week. That’s what I call pizza money. Your raise buys you one more pizza a week.

In LaFarr’s case, he earns $120,000 a year. His 15 percent raise increases his salary about $18,000 a year or $350 a week. I call that filet mignon money. You can eat really well with that type of raise.

Two Glens Falls supervisors - Jack Diamond and Claudia Braymer - proposed reducing LaFarr’s raise to 2.85 percent. That raise for LaFarr would still be three times what a $40,000 employee gets ($3,420) and amount to $65 a week. It’s not filet mignon, but it is definitely steak.

Most people would be pretty happy with a $65 a week raise.

There was little support for the measure among the other supervisors, despite the fact that LaFarr has made a laughingstock of their nepotism policy - he hired his son to work for him - and has been secretive about many criminal cases.

The supervisors also gave themselves a 30 percent raise.

There was more discussion over this raise and a call to lower it to 2.85 percent as well.

The supervisors defeated the proposal to lower the raise to 2.85 percent by a 9-8 vote.

What was not reported was who were the nine who voted for LaFarr’s raise.

In another time, the newspaper used to include a vote box which told how each person voted. It held them accountable to voters. It might have had an effect in yesterday’s voting. A public meeting has been scheduled to discuss the budget further on Nov. 17 and the newspaper would weigh in on whether this was sound spending of taxpayer dollars.

Reporter responds

After writing about my memories at The Post-Star building on Lawrence and Cooper Streets earlier this week, I heard from former news reporter Nick Reisman. You probably have seen Nick on Spectrum news over the years covering Albany politics and government. He now works for Politico.

Nick related a late-night story from his days at The Post-Star. He was in the newsroom waiting for a couple of the sports folks to finish so they could grab a beer when a fire was reported in Queensbury. They all decided to forgo the plan for a beer and go cover the fire.

Nick got some bare bones information about a warehouse burning where no one was hurt and one of the sports folks got a photo.

“But it was easily one of the more fun nights I had working at the newspaper. What's sad is between remote work, the depleted resources and the reduced ambition, something like that won't be replicated for people just getting started in the business,” Nick said in an email.  “You learn a lot in a newsroom -- how to talk to cops, how to collaborate with other reporters and editors. And I definitely learned a lot at Lawrence and Cooper Streets.”

We all did.

Another Post-Star story

Shortly after I arrived at the newspaper, we replaced an antiquated computer system called - the One System. To celebrate the event, an auction was held for the honor by one employee to take a sledge hammer to one of the terminals on the back loading dock.

Greg Brownell, the assistant sports editor at the time, won the auction and laid waste to the poor terminal to the cheers of his fellow employees.

We hated that computer system.

Greg just retired this past year. I’m glad he didn’t have to move to a new building.

People I missed

Off the top of my head I mentioned a few of the people who shaped The Post-Star over the years.

In retrospect, I missed a couple of the people who were their for decades. One was Michelle Georgianni, the long-time circulation representative who started work there as a teenager and left as the circulation manager after 42 years.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention our long-time obituary clerks Kathy Hamell and Barb Green. They were our true ambassadors to the community. Both were there over 40 years.