Nearly 1-in-5 Oneida County employees – at least 310 workers — are scheduled to get raises of 10 percent or more in Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente’s proposed 2009 budget, an O-D comparison of this year’s and next year’s budgets found.

Some of those raises occurred to fix pay inequities, county officials say. At least 15 of 29 Department of Motor Vehicles employees received union-negotiated raises, not for working more hours, but because the office started staying open Thursday nights, officials say.

These pay boosts are occurring in a year when median earnings nationwide have risen roughly 3 percent, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Picente, who proposed a $348 million 2009 budget two weeks ago with an 8.9 percent tax levy

increase, stands by the raises he’s proposing.

“It goes back to the bigger picture of fixing inequities that were here when I came here,” said Picente, a Republican.

He notes that some pay hikes, like the Motor Vehicles increases, were negotiated with unions after the 2008 budget was created. So some of the increases really reflect two years’ worth of raises, not simply one, he said.

Picente also said his proposed upgrades would come in addition to other contractual raises that were already scheduled.

“To say it’s a 10 percent raise is not entirely true,” he said. “If we did nothing, these people are still going to get increases.”

But the spending has drawn some criticism amid what might be the state’s worst economic climate in decades, given the plummeting state of New York City’s finance industry.

“All over the state, local governments are cutting their budgets, imposing hiring freezes and working very hard to make ends meet,” Lise Bang-Jensen of the Empire Center for Public Policy said. “How many county taxpayers are going to see their incomes increase 8.9 percent in the coming year?”

Those getting the 10 percent-plus raises range from individuals at the lowest end of the pay spectrum to supervisors and attorneys.

Among them:

* Sheriff Daniel Middaugh received a $20,000 raise earlier this year, despite a veto by Picente. Still, under the proposed budget, he would get a cost of living increase on top of that, hiking his salary from $67,674 to $90,210. That’s a 33 percent raise.

* Child support unit supervisor Randi Johnson would see her pay increase from $59,985 to $69,903, a 16.5 hike.

* Picente’s assistant, Caitlin McCann, would get a raise of 20 percent, going from $36,820 to $44,164.

ä Lower on the pay scale, Motor Vehicles representative Deborah Williams would get a raise from $22,078 to

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