Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Lewis County Board of Commissioners voted to give Sheriff Rob Snaza a raise of more than $18,000 a year.

The move comes after discussing the issue for as long as he’s been on the board, said BOCC Vice Chair Gary Stamper who was elected two years ago.

Snaza was also elected in November 2014.

Sheriff Rob Snaza

The salaries of Lewis County’s elected officials are set in a process that involves a citizen panel. The panel establishes the pay for the three county commissioners. It makes recommendations about the wages for the other elected officials which the three-member board of county commissioners may adopt.

The process has been in place since 2001.

The last time the panel convened, in early 2014, they suggested raises of five percent for all the positions. Beginning in January of that year, and still today, the annual salary of $75,108 applies to the assessor, auditor, clerk, coroner and treasurer. Coroner Warren McLeod actually only made half that until he switched from half-time to full-time in 2015.

The panel’s recommendations gave the county commissioners a little more ($82,620), the sheriff even more ($90,644), and the prosecutor even more than that ($141,705).

Commissioner Edna Fund

A resolution to increase the sheriff’s salary was approved unanimously on Monday by Commissioners Stamper, Edna Fund and Bill Schulte. It was one of eight items on the consent agenda, voted on as a bundle.

The stated reason in the resolution indicates the matter would be “depoliticized” if it were taken out of the hands of the salary commission. Instead, beginning Jan. 1, it states, the sheriff shall be paid a salary five percent greater than the undersheriff.

The resolution indicates other reasons for the change: because the sheriff currently earns less than his subordinate and because he earns less than sheriffs of comparable counties in the state.

Undersheriff Wes Rethwill is paid $101,280 a year, with his pay tied to the pay of other commissioned officers at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office. The deputies wages are set by a collective bargaining agreement – their union contract – with the undersheriff and other command staff’s salaries set at certain percentages higher.

Commissioner Bill Schulte

On Jan. 1, Undersheriff Rethwill’s annual salary will rise to $103,812. So Sheriff Snaza’s annual salary of $90,644 will grow to $109,000.

Sheriff Snaza says he’s “just thinking of our office and thought it was the right thing to do.”

He put the resolution before the county commissioners in July, and it got tabled because Commissioner Schulte was out on leave, he said.

“This was two years in the making, because I’ve never asked for a raise before,” Snaza said.

Among the reasons for his proposal, he said, are he’s earning less than his undersheriff, less than some other sheriffs who don’t even run jail facilities and he feels the role of sheriff has changed.

“I just felt like the sheriff is just like the CEO of a company and should be paid at a higher rate,” Snaza said.

Commissioner Gary Stamper

Snaza spoke of how different his job is from other elected Lewis County officials.

He’s in charge of a much larger organization with more than 100 employees, as well as volunteers and then a jail with an average population of 200 inmates.

“You’re responsible 24-7, 365 days a year,” he said. “If we have a flood, it’s not the auditor that gets up at 3 a.m.”

He said he’s not asking the commissioners to put more money into the sheriff’s office budget for his raise. The sheriff’s office will absorb it, he said.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office annual budget of about $14.2 million this year is expected to be about $14.5 million next year.

He said he has mixed feelings about it, feeling he deserves the raise, but thinks some people might not understand it.

“I know the concerns, people are going to say, ‘he’s an elected, he knew what he was getting into’,” he said.

And he pondered aloud, he wished it didn’t take place the same time as the county is considering cutting back on its support to the senior centers.

It’s something the former sheriff contended with, earning less than some of the people working below him as well. When Snaza was a sergeant, sometimes with overtime his paycheck would be bigger than Mansfield’s, he said.

“I used to always tease Steve Mansfield about it,” Snaza said.

Part of Snaza’s thinking includes how fiscally responsible he feels his office has been.

“I think it’s incumbent on every official to ask, what are we doing to save money, and to bring revenue into the county,” he said.

Last year, the sheriff’s office used $684,000 less than they were budgeted for, and turned that money back into the county general fund, he said.

They also bring in money, by renting out jail beds to other agencies.

In 2015, that amounted to a little over $1.5 million in revenue from the jail, he said. “This year, we’re looking at about $2.1 million,” he said.

The local salary commission’s role has not changed otherwise, by the recent resolution.

Its role remains to set the pay for the assessor, auditor, clerk, coroner, treasurer, commissioners and prosecutor.

When the group evaluated salaries in 2014, its philosophy was an elected official in Lewis County should be paid a comparable rate to an individual doing the same job in a similar county.

The only Lewis County elected officials whose pay is not dealt with by the salary commission are the judges in Lewis County District and Superior Courts. They’re fixed by a state commission on salaries.

And as of Monday, the sheriff’s pay is exempt from that group’s influence as well.

The long name for the citizen group is the Lewis County Independent Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials.

The salary commission only convenes when requested by the Lewis County Board of Commissioners, according to Lewis County Human Resource Director Archie Smith.
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2016 LEWIS COUNTY ELECTED OFFICIALS ANNUAL SALARIES

Assessor: Dianne Dorey: $75,108

Auditor: Larry E. Grove: $75,108

Clerk: Scott Tinney: $75,108

Coroner: Warren McLeod: $75,108

Treasurer: Arny Davis: $75,108

Commissioner: Bill Schulte: $82,620

Commissioner: Edna Fund: $82,620

Commissioner: Gary Stamper: $82,620

Sheriff: Rob Snaza: $90,644

Prosecutor: Jonathan Meyer: $141,705*
•••

* The Lewis County prosecutor’s pay is tied to the salary commission but also has state influence, and the state pays more than half of it, according to Lewis County Human Resource Director Archie Smith.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge set bail with $25,000 signature bonds for the suspects accused of breaking into a Centralia residence while a woman home alone there locked herself in her bedroom.

Reginald D. Ford, 22, and Isaiah M. Kelly, 20, a pair of cousins from Federal Way, are each charged with residential burglary.

Kelly was arrested shortly after the Saturday afternoon incident at the 900 block of West Pear Street.

The three Centralia College basketball team members who reside there, but weren’t home at the time, told police Kelly was on the team with them, until he was released at the start of the school year.

When Ford was brought before a judge yesterday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court, temporary defense attorney Joely O’Rourke told the judge Ford was requesting a court appointed lawyer. He is unemployed, she said.

Charging documents relate the victim heard someone knock, then pound on the front door and then kick it open. She said she was scared because her boyfriend and their roommates were away and she locked herself into her bedroom.

She said she heard the sounds of someone going through things in the house, but didn’t hear any talking and was on the phone with dispatch when her bedroom door was kicked in.

She yelled, they left, according to court documents.

When police followed up, they learned numerous items were missing from the home including two Xboxes, several games and a Bluetooth speaker, according to the documents. A pair of Nike Air Jordans belonging to one of the residents were found near where police located Kelly.

Ford was booked into the Lewis County Jail on Monday. Arraignments for both suspects are scheduled for Dec. 8.
•••

For background, read “News brief: Victim startles burglars inside Centralia residence” from Sunday November 27, 2016, here

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge declared a mistrial yesterday in a rape case in Lewis County Superior Court and it’s not clear if prosecutors will attempt to try again.

A 23-year-old Centralia man was charged late this summer for an incident reported in the spring of 2015 that allegedly occurred a year earlier at a rural Centralia home with a young woman with whom he had somewhat of an intimate relationship.

Jordan T. White was charged with second-degree rape, pleaded not guilty and proceeded to trial. He has been free on an unsecured bond.

Defense attorney Shane O’Rourke said they were most of the way through their first day yesterday, when the sheriff’s deputy sitting with the deputy prosecutor dropped his pen onto the table, at a particular point during a recording being played for the jury.

O’Rourke said he wondered if it was intentional or not and began watching the deputy, and saw him bow his head and put it into the palm of his hand, in a way a person could potentially perceive to mean, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

Finally, when the deputy gestured to the alleged victim while she was on the stand testifying, O’Rourke made an objection and the jurors were sent out of the room.

“I wondered, is he encouraging her to cry, trying to console her,” he said. “Unfortunately, the jurors were watching.”

It’s common for the investigating law enforcement officer to sit at the prosecutor’s table during criminal trials. Officers of the court are not allowed to comment on the evidence during trial, even non-verbally.

O’Rourke asked Judge Nelson Hunt for a dismissal, for government misconduct, saying he believed the deputy’s actions tainted the jury.

Judge Hunt concluded the defendant had been prejudiced, citing intentional and problematic behavior, O’Rourke said. He declared a mistrial.

Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Melissa Bohm declined to comment today if another trial would be held.

Bohm said the attorneys will go before a judge tomorrow, to set a new date for a trial, but she expects the defense will make a motion to dismiss the case entirely.

The case was investigated by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office, beginning in April 2015. The alleged victim, 19 years old at the time, said she didn’t report it when it happened out of fear, embarrassment and uncertainty about what would happen, according to charging documents.

She told the deputy she and her friends were drinking Fireball, she was heavily intoxicated and realized the next morning she had been anally penetrated, according to the allegations. White told the deputy the two had a history of fooling around, with oral sex, and on the night in question, what they did was her idea, because she wanted to remain a virgin, the documents state.

A brief hearing is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court.