Thousand Oaks Bonuses Attacked : Opponents Will Ask Council Members to Scrap Program

Two longtime opponents of Thousand Oaks’ city employee bonus program said Thursday that they will ask the City Council next week to scrap the 5-year-old program because of the continuing unwillingness of the city to disclose its details.

Community activists Richard Booker and Heinrich F. (Corky) Charles said they will begin gathering signatures to place the issue on the 1986 ballot if the City Council refuses to abandon the program.

Since late 1980, the Ventura County municipality has awarded annual bonuses to its city manager, city attorney and certain department heads, based on how well they met performance goals set earlier in each year. The bonuses can total up to 20% of the employees’ salaries.

Booker and Charles, who said they have investigated the bonus program for the last two years, have repeatedly criticized the city for refusing to disclose the specific amounts of past bonuses and the justification for the awards.

Details Could Be Embarrassing

The city has maintained that to disclose the amounts and the basis for the awards could embarrass those who received less than others, and could jeopardize the integrity of the evaluation process.

In April, the state attorney general wrote in a legal opinion that the amounts of the awards and the grounds for them are subject to public disclosure. A Ventura County Grand Jury report recently reached the same conclusion.

Following the attorney general’s opinion, the council said it would disclose future awards, but not past ones. A consultant now is studying the city’s compensation program--with an emphasis on the bonus awards--and will issue a final report to the council next month.

Booker and Charles said Thursday that they want the program scrapped because of the city’s refusal to detail past awards and because they have been given different figures for the total amounts of bonuses paid in the past.

$527,688 in Bonuses

Before the attorney general’s opinion, city officials said that the total amount of bonuses paid from 1980 through 1984 was $273,110, the two opponents said. But, after the opinion, the city disclosed that $527,688 actually was paid over those years, they said.

“This is a poorly conceived and poorly operated program,” Booker said.

However, Councilman Frank Schillo, who along with Mayor Lawrence E. Horner met twice recently with Booker and Charles, said the discrepancy was caused by changes in the activists’ requests for information.

Horner and Schillo said they are awaiting the consultant’s report before deciding the fate of the bonus program.