Salary commission approves pay increase for Lewis County commissioners

The Lewis County Salary Commission made a final decision Tuesday evening to raise the salary of the Lewis County commissioners by 3% starting in 2026.

The members of the Lewis County Citizens Salary Commission officially voted to approve the increase to the Lewis County commissioners’ salaries during its Aug. 19 meeting. The commission tasked its chairman, Terry Petty, with submitting a letter on behalf of the commission to county officials notifying the local government of the salary increase and its effective date of Jan. 1, 2026.

Commission members said the small salary increase was meant to offset the recent rate of inflation in recent years. The increase means the base salary for Lewis County Commissioners Sean Swope, Lindsey Pollock and Scott Brummer will increase from the current $100,838 per year to $103,863 per year.

After the completion of their work for this budget season, the three commission members — Kayla Macewen, Colby Moore and Petty — set the commission’s next meeting for April 2026 to reconvene ahead of the county’s budget season.

After concluding the meeting, members of the commission said they expect the process to go quicker in the future with less time needed to get up to speed on the process. The commission spent some of its early meetings receiving presentations from county officials on how the salary commission operated in the past and looking at the county budget process. It was each member's first time on the salary commission.

Petty and Macewen said it was an unfamiliar experience and their first time participating in local government beyond voting.

“I think we had quite a bit of support, you know, just looking back at the sessions we’ve already had. The folks from the office here and all I think really went out of their way to answer our questions and supply information to us,” Petty said. “We kind of stepped into this not knowing the full extent of what we were dealing with and trying and feel it out as we go. It was kind of a new experience to get that under our belt, and next time should be a little more, we know what to expect and we know what we’re going to be looking at the next few years.”

Once Lewis County receives the official notice from the commission, the decision becomes final and cannot be altered by county officials. It can, however, still be challenged by county residents through a local petition.

Residents can oppose salary decisions made by citizen commissions by filing a petition with the Lewis County Auditor’s Office. A successful petition requires signatures from at least 15% of the Lewis County voting population based on the numbers from the most recent general election. A successful petition earns a spot on the local ballot in the next general election. At that point, local voters can choose whether to approve or deny the change in salary.

The newest rendition of the Lewis County Citizens Salary Commission, which features just three members, is much smaller compared with the 10-member salary commissions that have been created in the past. The commission's new size comes as a result of recent state legislation that greatly reduced the requirements for a citizens salary commission.

The three-person commission features just one individual from each of Lewis County’s three commissioner districts. Each represents the district of one of the Lewis County commissioners. Until recently, state law required county level salary commissions to be made up of 10 members with six being selected randomly and four being selected for industry experience, with each representing one of four groups: business, professional personnel management, legal profession and organized labor.

Those requirements remain for charter counties, which are counties that have passed by referendum their own set of rules and structure for the local government. But non-charter counties like Lewis County, which uses the standard Washington state county government form, are no longer held to that standard.

The size of the new commission is not the only change. The decision made by the current Lewis County Citizens Salary Commission starts the county in a new direction for determining commissioner salaries, breaking from a previous precedent of linking them to per-capita income change for Lewis County residents and instead basing the salary increase simply off of recent inflation rates.

The 2013 Lewis County Salary Commission that set the previous precedent at the time was also responsible for setting salaries for a much larger group of Lewis County elected officials, including the Lewis County auditor, assessor, clerk, coroner, prosecuting attorney and treasurer.

The Lewis County Board of Commissioners rescinded the citizen salary commission’s power to set those salaries in 2022 and instead linked them to the salaries of Washington state superior court judges.

Even so, the commission retained the power to set the salaries of the Lewis County commissioners and followed the per-capita methodology during its last iteration in 2023 when it instituted an increase of 10.95% to Lewis County Commissioners base salary. That increase took the Lewis County commissioner base salary from $90,886.00 to $100,838.00. That sum does not include health care costs and other benefits.