Kootenai County judge tells commissioners to reinstate the assessor's salary with pay bump

click to enlarge Kootenai County judge tells commissioners to reinstate the assessor's salary with pay bump
Young Kwak photo
The Kootenai County assessor won his salary back in court.

Kootenai County's Board of Commissioners must reinstate the county assessor's $90,000 salary, which they slashed in half last year in an attempt to force the current elected official out.

That decision came on May 4, when Kootenai County District Judge Susie Jensen found that the commissioners had wrongly cut the salary of Assessor Béla Kovacs.

Jensen noted that the court doesn't have an opinion on what the assessor's salary should be, but it needs to be based on reasonable compensation for the duties of that elected role.

"While the Board positions the reduction as a reaction to Kovacs' failure to perform all the duties of the job," Jensen wrote in her order, "the reality is that by changing the salary for the Assessor, the Board has essentially said that the full performance of the Assessor's statutory duties and responsibilities is worth $45,000, not the original $90,000."

Idaho case law shows that if the scope of a job changes, a salary reduction is OK. But if the responsibilities remain the same, even if Kovacs fails to fulfill them, dramatically cutting the pay "exceeds the bounds of reason, is arbitrary, and is an abuse of discretion," Jensen's order states.

Kovacs, who said he didn't have time to respond to specific questions before our deadline, was first appointed to the role in May 2020, after the death of the previous assessor.

Last year, his office missed key property assessment deadlines that help taxing districts determine their budgets. He tells the Inlander that the missed deadlines were not his fault and instead blamed the commissioners for extending the time they took to consider an unprecedented number of assessment appeals.

click to enlarge Kootenai County judge tells commissioners to reinstate the assessor's salary with pay bump
Béla Kovacs

Staff have repeatedly complained to the board that Kovacs is difficult to work with. Half of the assessor's 60-plus staff members asked him not to run for reelection in 2022, and 33 employees have quit or retired since he started.

The board and other elected officials asked Kovacs to step down last summer. After he declined, the commissioners, including Leslie Duncan, Bill Brooks and (at the time) Chris Fillios, voted in August to cut his salary in half.

Kovacs then asked for a judicial review. He was also reelected in November, facing no opponents on the ballot, though a write-in candidate who works in the office received 22.5 percent of the vote.

Although Jensen ruled in Kovacs' favor, she did not award him attorney's fees, as she didn't find that the board acted "without a reasonable basis in fact or law." Jensen directed the commissioners to reinstate his pay retroactively to Sept. 25, 2022, and to include a 6 percent cost of living increase that was given to other elected officials.

"We're disappointed it didn't go the way we thought it should go," Commissioner Brooks says. "I'm still very dissatisfied with Béla Kovacs' performance and his lack of ability to work positively with the staff."

The commission has not yet scheduled a time to vote on Kovacs' salary, which requires a resolution, according to the board's spokesman Jonathan Gillham. ♦

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Samantha Wohlfeil

Samantha Wohlfeil is the News Editor and covers the environment, rural communities and cultural issues for the Inlander. She's been with the paper since 2017.