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Harris County commissioners on Thursday slammed a consulting firm over the results of a costly pay equity study they said was riddled with errors.
The study — which was intended to address pay disparities across the county’s 62 departments — yielded incomplete and inconsistent results, according to a county executive’s review of the findings.
Gallagher Benefit Services was selected last year to conduct the study, for $1.2 million, that reviewed more than 20,000 county positions and provided recommendations for implementing a department-wide equitable pay structure. On Thursday, commissioners raised concerns about the methodology that was used, bashing the firm for the study they called “subpar.”
Though the county was set to implement pay structure changes by February, the concerns raised by commissioners and during meetings with county departments could delay the schedule. The discussion came weeks after the firm presented its findings of the study, which at the time appeared to be met with support from county officials.
The study, Ellis said at the time, found that Hispanic women are the lowest-paid Harris County employees, followed by Black women. The median salary for Black and Hispanic women working for Harris County was $59,000 compared to $76,000 for white men, a 29% difference, according to the study.
Following concerns that were raised in an email from Harris County Precinct 1 Chief of Staff Brandon Dudley, commissioners said a deeper analysis of the data found flaws with certain job classifications and descriptions. Commissioner Tom Ramsey suggested pausing the study until the firm can answer critical questions about its methodology.
Dudley’s email, addressed to representatives of the firm, said several positions in the precinct were downgraded to lower-level classifications without specific reasoning — only that the decisions were based on wording in the job descriptions. Several irregularities were identified in the study, and the findings do not provide adequate information to “validate or defend” the recommendations, according to the email.
On Thursday, Ramsey called the study flawed and said key precinct positions were misclassified or excluded, like mechanics being placed as accountants. He said the report doesn’t use a “people first” approach and fails to understand the roles of certain county employees.
“So when you start trying to say a nursing position is kind of like a road and bridge position, you don’t know what the — I’m sorry — hell you are doing,” he said.
It would also be difficult for the firm to understand the worth of a position based on its approach, he said. What’s on the line is about $42 million that the county set aside to implement a new department-wide pay structure.
Commissioners introduced and passed several motions about the pay equity study on Thursday, including a suggestion to temporarily pause it for the purpose of validating and reconciling job classification and compensation data.
“The heart and soul of county government, particularly Harris County government, has been the tenure of our county employees,” Ramsey said. “And when they work here for 20 or 30 years, that should be worth something. But under this plan, it ain’t worth much.”
In a statement to Houston Public Media, Gallagher said the study was delivered to Harris County without any issues. The firm was engaged to help provide fair and equitable pay for county employees, and its team delivered the project and recommendation using an industry standard and professional methodology, according to the statement.
Commissioner Lesley Briones, who said the changes are too important to get wrong, introduced another motion enabling departments to submit written challenges and corrections to ensure data in the process reflects “operational realities.”
“It’s the people at the bottom that I’m most concerned about when you dig into the data because they didn’t consider them,” Briones said. “And so if we’re here fighting for fairness and equity and to do right especially by those at the bottom pay scale, this backfires and actually in some instances that we’ve been digging into, it creates suboptimal conclusions and boxes folks in.”
The timeline of implementing the new pay structure is up in the air after officials said an extension may be needed to clear up inconsistencies. The county’s human resources department is in the process of meeting with departments to gather input on the pay scale recommendations.
Thursday’s discussion came months after all eight Harris County constables quickly became some of the county’s top-paid employees after commissioners passed hefty law enforcement raises — deepening Harris County’s project budget deficit for the new fiscal year. Ellis said that the county is long overdue for establishing a better pay structure for lower-level employees.
“We didn’t have a big study when we figured out what to do for people at the top, we just did it for our department heads and other key people,” Ellis said. “Nor did we do it for law enforcement, so I just don’t want to wait.”
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