A new drive began Monday to grant the Erie County jail superintendent a 10 percent raise, as lawmakers also quizzed the county attorney on the Holding Center’s worrisome suicide rate.

Neither Sheriff Timothy B. Howard nor Undersheriff Richard Donovan attended a meeting of the Erie County Legislature’s Public Safety Committee to state their case for Robert A. Koch Jr.

They instead sent Michael Reardon, a Koch subordinate and the Holding Center’s chief of operations, to say that lifting Koch’s salary from $95,118 to almost $105,000 a year has been publicly mislabeled “a raise.”

Koch in May 2009 returned to the post supervising the Holding Center in Buffalo and county Correctional Facility in Alden after holding other administrative titles in Erie County’s Jail Management Division.

Reardon said Koch will simply be receiving the salary he should have been granted in May — though some skeptical lawmakers wondered why the sheriff did not seek the raise last year or put it in his 2010 budget request.

Had he done so, Howard would not now need Legislature consent to hike Koch’s salary in midyear. Historically, however, lawmakers have let the county’s elected department heads shift their budgets as long as they stay within their bottom line.

“I don’t think anyone would disagree we need a leader there,” Reardon said when lawmakers asked whether this is the right time to reward the head of a jail system that is the focus of lawsuits from the U. S. Justice Department and the State Commission of Correction, which polices local jails.

Koch also did not attend the session, which included a sweeping discussion of the Holding Center’s suicide-prevention measures with County Attorney Cheryl A. Green. But Koch in recent days spoke to Legislator Daniel M. Kozub, D-Hamburg. Kozub then pushed Koch’s raise even more fervently than Reardon did.

“This is paying somebody for the job he is doing,” Kozub said, praising Koch’s almost 30-year career in the county jails. The full Legislature meets Thursday.

The raise breezed though the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee weeks ago before being pulled back by committee Chairwoman Christina Wleklinski-Bove, D-West Seneca, amid public outrage over a raise for the head of a troubled jail system.

Under Koch’s watch, the Holding Center last year mistakenly released a violent parolee. It allowed an inmate to escape from his cell and loiter on the roof. Inmates continue to report beatings by deputies. The state commission pulled all extra-capacity variances for the correctional facility, citing concerns about management.

Meanwhile, Holding Center suicides remain a serious concern, as shown by hanging deaths in December and February, and a suicide attempt in January.

Still, Green continues to oppose the Justice Department’s request to let a suicide-prevention expert into the jails, and she disputes the calculation that the Holding Center’s suicide rate is almost five times the national average for jails.

Democratic Leader Maria R. Whyte of Buffalo said that whatever Erie County has been doing to prevent suicides, it needs to do more, including welcoming the suicide-prevention expert.

“We have nothing to lose, in my opinion,” Whyte said.