Witt Says Police Pay Initiative May Violate Charter

San Diego City Atty. John Witt said Monday that a June 3 ballot initiative calling for a one-time pay increase for police officers may be invalid because it conflicts with the City Charter.

Describing the police initiative as “a good deal misleading,” Witt said that, by seeking a pay raise of as much as 17% to bring police salaries in line with those paid to California Highway Patrol offficers and police officers in the state’s other large cities, the initiative fails to inform voters that a charter amendment passed in 1980 gave City Council members the authority to set salaries.

The initiative “takes people’s attention away from the fact that it really is amending a charter section . . . that makes this kind of bootstrap comparison with other agencies unlawful in San Diego,” Witt said.

Witt said he will meet with the City Council in executive session today to discuss three or four “technical difficulties” with the ballot proposal.

Ty Reid, president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., said Witt is “grasping at straws” to drum up opposition to the pay increase.

“We were aware we would be attacked by the other side on this thing,” Reid said. “This is just the first step in a long battle. It was totally anticipated. If we had not had this problem, the city attorney would have come up with three others against us.”

Witt’s legal questions capped a rough day for the ballot initiative, which also received stinging criticism Monday from Deputy Mayor Ed Struiksma in his State of the City address. Struiksma said the $10-million pay increase would jeopardize the council’s plans to hire 143 additional officers this year.

“The San Diego Police Department is the fourth highest paid force among the nation’s 10 largest cities--trailing only Los Angeles, Chicago and New York,” Struiksma said.

Reid said that police officers were stunned that Struiksma, a former San Diego police officer who quit in 1980 to run for the City Council, decided to use the formal speech to attack the police pay proposal. He called Struiksma’s remarks “alarmist and inaccurate.”

“I don’t think it was appropriate for him to raise red flags in the State of the City address,” Reid said. “It hurts his credibility in the mayor’s race more than it would ever hurt our initiative.”

The annual salary of $20,000 for beginning San Diego officers and $29,000 after five years ranks 47th in the state, according to POA statistics. POA officials, who contend that such salaries contribute to sagging morale and high attrition rates, submitted 73,000 signatures on petitions Dec. 23 to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Police Chief Bill Kolender has endorsed the pay hike, which needs only a majority of votes to pass because it does not involve a tax increase. The proposal calls for city officials to trim 1.8% from the city budget to pay for the salary jump.

Reid said POA officials decided that the best way to formulate the ballot initiative was to keep the wording simple and direct. That prevented the petitions from mentioning the complex issue of City Charter Section 11.1, which gave the City Council the authority to raise salaries and took it away from ballot initiatives using other cities as comparisons.

“The more complex you make a charter amendment change, the fewer people you will have voting for it,” Reid said.

But by neglecting Section 11.1, the POA may have to deal with a court battle over the interpretation of the initiative.

“The initiative may be invalid because it arguably attempts to rescind or amend this section (11.1) without even referring to it,” said Deputy City Atty. Jack Katz.

Reid said that, if a word change in the initiative is needed, the City Council can clean up the language.

Councilman William Jones said he was unaware of the city attorney’s position. Other council members were unavailable Tuesday.

Witt said he doubted that a judge would keep the initiative off the ballot because of the legal technicalities. But, he added, the problems would “have to be pointed out by opponents of the measure.”

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino contributed to this report.