The Treasurer Who Said Getting Elected Cost Too Much to Cut His Salary

County Treasurer Maple denies the charges of Commissioner Heaton that he is disregarding his campaign pledge to not reduce the expenses of his office, and promises to make reductions when tax payments drop off. But he also makes the cost of his election a plea against reducing his own salary. When asked by a Post-Intelligencer reporter what he had to say in reply to Mr. Heaton, he said:

"Our work here is something that has never been done in this territory for years, if ever. It is a segregation of the taxes on the rolls, in compliance with the new law, whereby taxpayers are required to pay one-half of the taxes during May, and by so doing are given until fall in which to pay the remainder. Now this work necessitates fully twice, and in many cases three and four times as long to make out tax receipts in this way as it did from the rolls as formerly prepared, which were made out and sent in under the old law. This necessitates an exceptionally great amount of work, which will not justify a reduction in the present clerical force, at least for this month. After this month we probably will be in a condition to reduce the force, and no doubt will do so. There is nobody that is going to work harder for economy than I am, but the work now in hand has to be done, and it requires both skill and patience in computing interest, etc. Relative to my own salary, it cost me four times as much to get this office as it did others, and as I have only been in office one month and a half, it is hardly fair to ask me the very first thing to cut down my salary. As time goes along I may consider the proposition, and no doubt I will.

"Relative to the statement in an evening paper that I had my son in as second cashier, and that he was drawing a salary from the county as such, I would say that the story is a pure fabrication. My son is not and never has been second cashier, and has only been acting as deputy clerk since the first of the month."

An error crept into yesterday's article on the reduction of salaries in the auditor's and clerk's offices, in the statement that in the clerk's office the salaries always exceed the fees; the fact being that there has always been a surplus of $310 to $400 a month. The clerk's force also does a large amount of state and county work for which no fees are charged.