After another year of soaring tax revenue, Dallas County commissioners approved a 3 percent raise for themselves this week.

That bump brings commissioners’ individual salaries to $163,500, and the county judge’s to $176,500, not counting the yearly $9,300 car allowance. But County Judge Clay Jenkins and Commissioner Elba Garcia — the two votes against the raise — said they wouldn’t accept the pay increase.

The raise applies to the commissioners and other county elected officials: the sheriff, constables, justices of the peace, county clerk, county treasurer, district clerk and tax assessor-collector. It does not cover courthouse judges or the district attorney.

Despite a 9 percent increase in property values, county commissioners will consider a $1 billion budget this month that keeps the tax rate the same as last year: 24.31 cents per $100 valuation.

Members of the Dallas County Commissioners Court have some of the highest salaries in the immediate area compared with their counterparts. In surrounding counties, the pay ranges from $75,500 and $94,300 for commissioners and the county judge in Rockwall County to $172,400 and $182,400, respectively, in Tarrant County.

Commissioners and county judges in those places and in Denton and Collin counties are also looking at proposals to raise their pay at least 3 percent.

Dallas County elected officials’ raise is consistent with the proposed 3 percent pay bump for employees across county departments. County policy is to increase elected officials’ salaries by the same percentage as county employees, and if there are varying degrees of raises, to boost elected officials by the lowest rate applied to employees.

Historically, county administrators have also taken the position that if elected officials — the chiefs of their respective offices — don’t get raises, neither do department heads hired by the county.

So if the Commissioners Court had rejected the salary increases for elected officials, then people like the elections administrator, the chief information officer and the director of the juvenile department wouldn't have gotten raises either.

Garcia once again voted against the raises for elected officials. She has previously said that such increases should be up to the public, not the officials themselves.

Her current pay is $126,454 — the salary set for commissioners when she took office in 2011, according to her chief of staff.

Jenkins also rejected the raise, for now. If the Democrat wins a third term in the November general election, he indicated he will accept a 3 percent increase to $176,500.

He is currently paid about $21,000 less than the $192,700 he would be making if he hadn't skipped some previous raises, according to his office.

“Because I don’t have a boss other than the people who elect me, and they don’t give me a performance review except for every four years, I don’t accept these interim raises,” Jenkins said at a meeting Tuesday.

After an exchange with Commissioner John Wiley Price, the county judge added: “Commissioner Price says that despite my written instruction not to pay me the raise last year, I may have gotten some of it. I don’t think that’s true. But if it is true, please let me know how much it is, and if that is true, it will be remitted.”

In the audience, an employee with the county auditor’s office shook her head when Jenkins looked her way.

“I’m seeing the auditor say it’s not true,” Jenkins said.

Commissioner Theresa Daniel, who voted for the raises along with Price and Commissioner Mike Cantrell, said the vote was not just for the people at the table with her.

“What we are talking about is 25 elected officials and their families, as well as the directors sitting in front of us right now,” she said during Tuesday's meeting. “So it’s a total of about 40 different families that we’re voting on.”

Daniel said she wants to allow the others to make their own decisions about whether they’ll accept the raise.

CLARIFICATION, 2:22 p.m., Sept. 20: An earlier version of this story said courthouse judges' pay is set by the state. In the case of county court judges, the state funds part of their salaries and sets a minimum amount that they must be paid. The county sets the total salary based on that standard.