Morrow County votes to terminate outside compensation study, staff to evaluate in‑house alternatives

County staff asked the board to authorize termination of a compensation‑study contract with an outside firm (MGT), saying the consultant’s approach produced non‑verifiable results and used inappropriate comparables.

Staff and the finance director told the board the consultant’s initial draft appeared to derive comparables using an internal dataset that effectively compared the county to itself, creating a statistically invalid baseline. Staff also said the consultant’s evaluation omitted several factors required by Oregon pay‑equity statutes and failed to include recommended comparables from neighboring jurisdictions without sufficient outreach.

Commissioners debated whether to finish and publish a final consultant draft—some said the county had already paid for work and preferred to review the final product—while others said adopting an unsubstantiated report could create a misleading public benchmark. Several commissioners and department heads recalled earlier problems with other classification tools and noted that the county already maintains a job‑classification system staff can use.

The board voted to authorize staff to terminate the contract with MGT and directed staff to evaluate alternatives, including completing the classification work in house using county tools and available Oregon compensation datasets. Staff said the county could buy a current Milliman compensation survey or compile targeted comparables for a lower cost than repeated consultant work.

Next steps: Staff will terminate the MGT contract as authorized, inventory remaining paid work, and propose an in‑house plan for completing the classification review, with cost estimates and a recommended approach to present to the board.