Salaries of nonunion Butler County employees remains a hot topic.

The county salary board on Wednesday again debated pay hikes when an additional 8 percent pay hike for the director of community corrections was proposed.

Director Doug Ritson previously received a 4 percent raise for 2015.

After a lengthy discussion, the salary board voted 3 to 2 for that raise.

Commissioners Bill McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton sided with county President Judge Thomas Doerr, who gets a vote on salary issues involving judicial workers, that the raise was warranted.

Commissioner Jim Eckstein and county Controller Ben Holland dissented.

Eckstein said Ritson is an excellent employee, but his raise should have been staggered over a longer period.

According to county records, Ritson was paid an annual salary of $72,600 in 2014 and $75,500 earlier this year. He now will be paid $81,900.

Eckstein said Doerr’s rationale that Ritson’s raise is a trade-off for lowering secretarial staff salaries isn’t valid since the latter will be accomplished through attrition.

“They either have to be dead or retired,” Eckstein said.

He said the attrition process would be lengthy.

“I’ll be dead, let alone these two,” Eckstein said about the other two commissioners, who are older than him.

Doerr said one of those secretaries already retired.

He pointed out Ritson’s additional raise, which is partially for obtaining a master’s degree, was delayed for six years.

“The county was struggling in 2009,” Doerr said.

He said he then agreed to further delays in raises for Ritson in the past, including the completion of a salary study.

“This will bring the judicial staff in compliance with the salary study,” Doerr said.

According to Doerr, Ritson was entitled to receive a total 14 percent raise, not 12 percent.

“I’m willing to compromise,” Doerr said.

Holland said he was not privy to any arrangement about a guaranteed raise for Ritson.

He agreed with Eckstein that the process of giving nonunion workers raises has been flawed.

According to Jack McMillin, Holland’s predecessor, he also was unaware of there being any such agreement regarding Ritson’s salary.

McMillin stated in an e-mail that the court did request a proposed increase for Ritson in December 2011, but that was removed from an agenda without discussion or vote.

McCarrier reiterated that the salary board in preceding years lowered the cost of living increases for elected officials and gave nonunion employee raises that were lower than union worker raises.

Eckstein was not impressed.

“Are we going to get a prize? he asked sarcastically.

Eckstein stressed the county hasn’t adequately addressed nonunion salaries that are either too high or tool low.

“We’re not doing enough,” he said.