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DeLand, FL – The head of the Volusia County Council says a suggestion to raise his position’s salary by more than $34,000 was someone else’s, not his.
VCC Chairman Jason Davis claims a newspaper headline published on Thursday saying that he wanted a 67% increase in pay starting in 2016 is “not entirely true” and he gave his side of the story during the morning session of the regularly scheduled VCC meeting.
Davis claims that idea – and others he recently passed on to Volusia County Charter Review Committee Chairman J. Hyatt Brown – came from constituents, not ones he came up with on his own.
“Throughout the year, I was asking people ‘Do you want to be on the charter review?’,” Davis said. “‘What do you want to hear that’s different on the charter? Is there any choices or changes that you’d like to see on that charter?’ And I got input from citizens everywhere.”
The 15 members of that all-volunteer committee – headed by Brown, a former Florida House Speaker appointed by Davis to the Charter Review Committee – will be suggesting changes to the county charter that would be voted on by Volusia residents during the November 2016 general election ballot.
The commission can place charter amendment ideas directly on the ballot without needing to go through the VCC and Davis says the proposal to raise his salary from $51,190 to $85,000 was one of 7 or 8 he felt was worth passing on to Brown for consideration.
“They’re not my requests,” Davis noted. “They were all [from] citizens.”
Davis noted that the newspaper who published the report – one created following a Freedom Of Information Act request – was “shooting the messenger” and that he’s fine with whatever happens to the suggestions he passed on to Brown.
“If they pass, so be it,” Davis stated. “If they don’t pass, so be it.”
Some of the other proposals Davis passed along include shutting down the Volusia County Growth Management Commission, the creation of an ethics board, having stricter term limits for council members, allowing council members to be compensated for travel expenses, allowing the VCC Chairman to have final say on meeting agenda items and allowing the VCC Chairman to cast tie-breaking votes in private.
If the pay bump as proposed is approved, that would be close to the maximum Davis’ position can receive under state law. The Volusia County Charter currently doesn’t allow Davis to make more than 60% of what he’s allowed to make by Florida statute.
The county charter also limits the other 6 VCC members – who each make $42,658 annually with their respective jobs – to 50% of what Florida allows them to make.
The proposal Davis forwarded to Brown would also boost VCC member pay by 10% as well as not allow the county chair to have any other kind of outside employment while in office.
VCC Vice-Chairman Pat Patterson told Davis afterward that he would’ve understood what Davis did had he just forwarded all the comments he got to Brown, but passing on certain comments and not others led to the impression that these were suggestions Davis approved.
“I feel that, once you did that, you owned it,” Patterson added. “It’s yours. That’s what you were turning in as your recommendations.”
The county charter requires a citizen review at least once every 10 years.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.
