Island County commissioners rescinded pay increases for themselves and most of the other elected county officials, but they found another way to receive higher compensation.

During a workshop meeting last week, the three commissioners decided to hike their travel stipend, which has remained unchanged for 13 years, from $700 a month to $1,200.

Human Resources Director Cathy Reid said the purpose of the travel stipend is to compensate the commissioners for travel within the county. She pointed out that commissioners are expected to attend meetings in Coupeville and use their own vehicles.

While the increase is overdue and separate from the commissioners’ salaries, the discussion during the workshop made it clear that the decision is a reaction to the failure of the salary increase measure.

Commissioner Jill Johnson offered some of the same arguments that she made when the commissioners spoke about increasing salaries for themselves.

“When the leaders of the organization are some of the lower paid ones, in terms of senior leadership, we have a structural problem,” she said.

She suggested that the commissioners should be making significantly more than the other elected officials “who run singular departments, who don’t run their meetings in public, who aren’t being tracked on how often they come into work, who don’t have every misstep they make in the newspaper, who are not responsible for the budget and can literally just walk in and say I want more and not figure out how.”

Reid went over the history of the commissioners’ travel stipend. It was set at $600 in 2006, increased to $800 in 2008 and then decreased to $700 the following year. The stipend was reduced to $300 in the 2010-2011 budget, but then increased back to $700 later in 2011.

Johnson said that when adjusted for inflation, the $800 a month in 2008 has the purchasing power of about $1,172 today. Commissioner Melanie Bacon suggested that the price of gas might be a more accurate gauge for setting the travel stipend. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average cost of gas in 2008 was $2.63 a gallon.

Last Tuesday, the commissioners rescinded a salary increase passed earlier in the month that affected the commissioners, assessor, auditor, treasurer, court clerk and coroner. The salary schedule, as adopted, violated the state constitution, which prohibits elected officials from increasing their own salaries after an election.

The salary increases were meant to decrease the wage gap between the sheriff and county prosecutor — who received raises last year — and all the other elected officials. Elected officials’ salaries are based on a percentage of the superior court judge, currently at $228,000 a year, which is set by an independent committee in Olympia.

The new salary schedule would have increased the commissioners’ salary from the current 51.21% of the judges’ salary to 54.8%, which amounts to an increase from about $117,000 to $125,000. Salaries for the auditor, assessor, treasurer, clerk and coroner would have increased from 46.09% to 49.59%, which is from about $105,000 to $113,000.

During the discussion about the salary schedule, Commissioner Janet St. Clair argued that her travel stipend should be increased because of the lengthy drive from her Camano Island home to the offices in Coupeville. She represents District 3, which covers North Whidbey and Camano Island.

The new travel stipend, however, will compensate all the commissioners equally.

During the discussion during the workshop, Johnson focused on the commissioners’ relatively modest salary as a reflection of the community’s lack of understanding of the responsibilities and significance of the job. She again complained that commissioners make less than the mayor of Oak Harbor, who works for fewer than a third of the number of constituents that the county has. She pointed out that the commissioners do the work of both a mayor and a city council — as they are executives and legislators — and would be paid more than $600,000 a year if they had the same per capita wages of the Oak Harbor mayor and council combined.

After making her comments, Johnson urged the other commissioners to not leave her “hanging” and give their input, but they did not expound. Bacon said the board had already talked the issue to death at a previous meeting.

During the workshop, Reid said she would place the travel stipend change on the commissioners’ Jan. 7 consent agenda.

In an interview after the meeting, Johnson said the commissioners will still likely adopt a new salary schedule in the coming year, but it won’t go into effect for commissioners during their current terms.