A $41,500 raise

Kimball Perry reports from the Hamilton County Commissioners' meeting:


As Hamilton County elected officials and administrators preach for a more efficient government, they have agreed to give a commissioner’s aide a newly created job – and a raise of $41,500 per year.

Karen Ball, an aide for Commissioner Todd Portune, was hired today by the Commissioners to the newly created job of compliance coordinator for the Hamilton County Special Construction Projects Division involving the Metropolitan Sewer District.

The new job comes as MSD revealed this week that the federal consent decree that orders the Hamilton County-owned sewer district to spend $1.5 billion on about 300 projects over the next 15 year to repair the system actually will cost $2.5 billion.

It also comes as MSD looks to impose rate increases of about 8 percent annually to pay for the fixes.

"In the grand scheme of things and in looking at the numbers we’re looking at, we need to throw whatever we can at it to address it," County Administrator Pat Thompson said today.

Ball, 44, of Price Hill, has been an administrative aide for Portune since August 1997 when he was a Cincinnati Council Member.

Her $55,438.24 salary as Portune’s aide will increase to $97,000 in the new job.

"(She) knows more about MSD than the rest of us combined," Thompson said of Ball. "Looking at the big picture of what the project entails, it’s a wise decision."

Portune said the move "literally will save millions and millions of dollars" at MSD.

Thompson was hired to make Hamilton County government more efficient. He started by getting rid of two administrative staff – Sharon Booker and Peter Hames – and hiring three new people. Ball is joined by Christian Sigman, hired as the county’s new budget director and Mike Schrimpf as a legislative policy analyst for the administration.

Thompson also has hired Jeff Aluotto as the new Assistant County Administrator in charge of the Public Services Department. Aluotto has been with Hamilton County since 1999 and now is the Hamilton County as the Solid Waste Manager.