Peterson responds to health department pay issue

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson responded Thursday during and after this week’s meeting of the Hill County Commission to the ongoing issue of complaints that the pay scale is low at the Hill County Health Department.

During the public comments segment of the meeting, Hill County resident Rickie Magnussen brought up the issue, having read and heard about it before, and said he was concerned that the commission wasn’t addressing the issue with the urgency required.

For the last few years, members of the Hill County Health Department have requested that their wages be raised to a level that reflects the educational requirements of their jobs, as many of them require degrees and yearly education that is very expensive.

Employees of the department, including Hill County Public Health Director Kim Berg, have said their wages are far below those of comparable counties, and while they ultimately support raising wages across the county, the requirements of their job make their department particularly overdue for a raise in compensation.

People at the department have raised concerns that the current wages are not high enough to retain staff or attract anyone new to the many open positions at the department.

Among those raising this concern is Hill County WIC Coordinator Nicole Hungerford, who herself announced her resignation just last week, citing wages and her department’s treatment by the commission as her primary reasons for leaving.

At a meeting Tuesday with Commissioner Jake Strissel, originally meant to me a meeting with the whole commission, Berg said Hill County Lead Public Health Nurse Bridget Kallenberger, who’s been with the department for 19 years, makes $23-and-change an hour.

Berg said the average wage for a public health officer in Montana is over $40 an hour, and after 13 years on the job, she is at $26.

Berg, Hungerford and others have expressed frustration that the commission is not acting more quickly on this issue, which they have brought up many times before, most recently at a meeting of the Hill County Board of Health where Peterson said the commission would present the department with a plan within a week, though later in the meeting he said 10 days.

At Tuesday’s meeting members of the department expressed frustration that after a full month there was still no plan, the commission having scrapped a proposal to hold a special election this year to raise taxes to pay for wage increases across the county.

Tuesday’s meeting mostly consisted of health department employees providing Strissel with possible ideas for how to solve the problem, almost all of which had been presented to the commission before, and the promise from Strissel that the commission would continue working on the issue.

At Thursday’s business meeting Magnussen said this is clearly a serious problem and it doesn’t sound like the commission is treating it with the urgency it requires, echoing the concerns of many health department employees about the low wages being an impediment to recruiting.

“We have a hard time recruiting people to Montana in general,” he said, “… especially up on the Hi-Line.”

He said department employees often have student loans that need to be paid off and it’s hard to do that in a job that doesn’t pay much.

His representative on the commission, Sheri Williams, wasn’t at Thursday’s meeting due to illness, but he wanted the minutes to reflect that he wants her to keep him and her constituents updated on the issue, because he wants to see it resolved.

Magnussen said he thinks the commission should reconsider holding a special election, but Strissel said that would cost the county more money than waiting until 2024.

“Do you suppose these folks will stick around until 2024 if you have to do that?” Magnussen asked.

“I hope so,” Strissel said.

After public comments Peterson read Hungerford’s resignation letter, including the criticisms she made toward the commission and their lack of action on the wage issue.

During the meeting Peterson announced that Hill County received a $377,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant from the state for the Milk River Levee.

After the meeting Peterson sat down with Magnussen as well as the Havre Daily News and New Media Broadcasters to further discuss the matter of health department wages, saying he feels the public isn’t aware of all facets of the issue.

“All you’re getting is individual opinions, you’re not necessarily getting all of the facts,” he said.

He said when Berg came to the commission with requests for higher wages she was asked to see if the grants that fund much of her department would allow for that now or in the future.

Berg said at Tuesday’s meeting that she already uses as much of the grants for wages as possible so that’s not something they can do.

Berg and others had also suggested that the county find a way to pay for the increase from the county’s budget, since the department needs less than $30,000 to solve the issue, which is not a huge amount of money in the context of the whole county’s budget, they said.

Peterson said there is no money in the county’s budget to do that and encouraged people to come in and look at the budget when it is being reviewed each year.

Magnussen said he has experience with budgets and even he would definitely have trouble parsing everything in there, so he’s not sure that’s really all that helpful.

Peterson also said wages in the county have increased 59 percent from the “late 1900s” though he said that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve kept up.

According to the inflation calculator http://www.in2013dollars.com, inflation has averaged 2.43 percent per year since 2000, meaning prices have increased an average 73.73 percent from 2000 to 2023.

Peterson also touted the commission’s recent efforts to raise wages across the county and their negotiations with unions.

The matter of the county’s health care plans was also brought up, with Peterson saying people shouldn’t compare Hill County’s wages to those of other counties because that doesn’t take into account the employees substantial health insurance benefits.

“You gotta compare apples to apples, you can’t compare apples and oranges and almonds,” he said.

Over the past three years employees of Hill County have criticized the commission multiple times for attempting to curtail health insurance benefits, pointing out that the benefits used to be much higher in years past, and that said coverage is not a substitute for wages.

Peterson criticized Hill County employees for often not doing enough to make sure they are making good decisions regarding the health coverage they choose.

He also criticized the health department employees bringing the issue up specifically, saying their attitude is also something that is having a negative impact on the situation and potentially driving away recruits.

“All of this venting that’s going on right now is not helping,” he said. “Why would I want to work for a county that has all of these disgruntled employees?”

He said the people complaining about this issue are a small minority of Hill County employees.

Magnussen said if it truly is the case that there is no way for the county to give the department what they want, the commission should just be brutally honest and tell them that.

“I just don’t think we should be stringing these people along,” he said.

He said he really thinks the commission should be trying to solve this issue given the possible consequences to the health department, and, by extension, the county.

Strissel said they are taking the issue seriously and know the impact the wages issue has had, not just in the health department, but across the county.

“I’ve seen too many employees leave because of wages and it breaks my heart every time,” he said.

Peterson said the matter is ongoing and encouraged people to get in touch with the commission to register their opinions on the matter.