Island County commissioners aren’t able to give themselves raises after all.

On Thursday, Commissioner Melanie Bacon confirmed that the board is going to rescind a resolution, adopted on Tuesday, which changes salary rates for county elected officials. The problem is that an element of the measure violates the state constitution.

Specifically, the constitution prohibits elected officials from increasing their own salaries after an election; the resolution set the raises for commissioners in District 1 and 2, who just won reelection, to go into effect in the new year.

The commissioners could simply change a couple of dates and redo the resolution, but they haven’t decided what action to take.

On Thursday, Bacon and Commissioner Jill Johnson said they trusted the staff to present the right information and so they didn’t research the issue themselves. Bacon said she was also under a mistaken impression, from discussions with staff, that raises for other elected officials had to wait until the officials’ next term in office to go into effect. In fact, they can go into effect immediately.

In Island County government, salaries for elected officials are based on the salary for superior court judges in the state, which is set by a citizens’ committee in Olympia. Two years ago, the commissioners increased salaries for the prosecutor and sheriff by adjusting the percentage. The recent resolution was meant to slightly decrease the gap between the salaries of those positions and the rest of the county elected officials — specifically the commissioners, assessor, auditor, treasurer, court clerk and coroner.

Currently, the superior court judge salary is $228,000 a year. The new salary schedule increased the commissioners’ salary from the current 51.21% of the judges’ salary to 54.8%, which amounts to an increase from about $117,000 to $125,000. Salaries for the auditor, assessor, treasurer, clerk and coroner will increase from 46.09% to 49.59%, which is from about $105,000 to $113,000.

The resolution was written so that the raises go into effect for District 1 and 2 commissioners, Bacon and Johnson, at the beginning of their next term, which is in January. The increases for the District 3 seat, currently held by Janet St. Clair, and for the other elected officials was set to go into effect in 2027, which is after the next election for county officials.

In an interview, Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks said he couldn’t discuss the resolution specifically, but he did explain the law in general terms. The framers of the state constitution, he said, wanted to make sure that elected officials didn’t use their authority to set their own salaries.

The state constitution specifically states that the “salary of any county, city, town, or municipal officers shall not be increased … or diminished after his election, or during his term of office.”

Banks explained that state government was much simpler when it was originally written. In current county government, for example, he and all the other elected officials, except commissioners, have no ability to increase their own salaries; budget decisions are made by the county commissioners.

As a result, the constitution was amended in the 1960s so that the prohibition on making salary increases during a term or after an election only applies to those elected officials with the ability to change their salaries. In other words, it applies to the commissioners but not the other county elected officials, who rely on the commissioners to make budget decisions.