Prosecutor asks council to raise paralegal and deputy-prosecutor pay to match market

Prosecuting Attorney Anthony Sommer asked county council members during the budget hearing on Oct. 2 to increase pay for his office’s paralegals, office manager and deputy prosecutors to better match regional market rates. Sommer said the office used a new salary survey from the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council (IPAC) and a reclassification that added educational requirements to some job descriptions as the basis for the request. “What I have proposed in my budget was to move the paralegal positions in my office to the bottom of the external salary range on the IPAC salary survey,” Sommer said. He said that would raise two paralegal positions by as much as 24% and one by about 15%, and the office manager by roughly 10 percent. Sommer told the council he has a vacant paralegal slot and payroll savings available that he would reallocate to help fund the increases rather than immediately spending reserve or outside funds. On deputy prosecutors, Sommer asked the council to move full‑time deputies toward a $90,000 annual salary, citing a statewide shortage of attorneys and the loss of candidates to neighboring counties. “For that particular attorney that I hired this year...the pay that that candidate had to take was $7,000 less per year than what the candidate could have achieved elsewhere,” Sommer said. He said adopting a higher deputy pay would be a roughly 4% increase to his overall personal‑services budget and that he had tried to propose modest increases (he used the low point of the IPAC ranges rather than midpoints). Council members asked how the request related to earlier county salary surveys; commissioners and councilors noted competing survey methodologies (a 92‑county IPAC survey vs. a narrower county survey) and said they wanted to remain tied to the county survey where possible. Several council members and the prosecutor discussed the possibility of partially funding raises by keeping one currently‑vacant paralegal position unfilled and redistributing those dollars. The prosecutor also told the council he would continue to press the state legislature for funding to offset county costs for deputy prosecutors. The council did not adopt a final number at the hearing; members said they would consider Sommer’s request alongside other department budgets and countywide compensation decisions at a later meeting. Ending: The prosecutor left his requested salary adjustments in the draft county budget for council consideration; he said he would return if the council needed more details and that the office would continue to rely first on existing payroll savings before drawing on other revenue sources.