Charter Amendment A: Merit System Proposed

Senior- and middle-management Los Angeles County employees face the happy prospect of receiving cash bonuses for doing a good job if they are selected for a management merit system that would be created under proposed Charter Amendment A on the June 3 ballot.

The incentives are embodied in a pay-for-performance system designed to increase efficiency and attract top talent to local government.

If the measure is approved, as many as 1,500 of the 75,000 county jobs could be removed from civil service classifications and made unclassified management positions. In the first year under the proposal, about 500 positions would be affected.

County managers, who potentially would be affected, hold down a wide range of supervisory positions in agencies ranging from the Sheriff’s Department to the Health Services Department. For current county civil service employees, participation would be voluntary. On entering the program, participating employees would give their department heads a “performance plan” for the job and would be graded and rewarded on how well they live up to the plan.

Participants selected from county civil service ranks would be taking no serious risk, because if they fail in the new job or become disenchanted with it, they would be able to return to their old civil service classifications. Managers hired from outside the county system would not have the extensive job security that is the norm for civil service jobs.

The five members of the Board of Supervisors would have the ultimate power to decide who would be offered the 1,500 non-civil service jobs, what rules they would work under and what kind of incentives, benefits and bonuses they would receive.

The proposed amendment was placed on the ballot by the supervisors on a 3-1 vote last Feb. 18. Supervisors Pete Schabarum, Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana backed the amendment while Supervisor Ed Edelman voted against it.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, although ill on the day of the vote, has been one of its most vocal opponents, calling it a throwback to a “Chicago politics” style of pa tronage that would make “political bosses” out of the supervisors.

County Chief Administrative Officer James C. Hankla, who originally proposed the idea, said the merit plan worked effectively when he was an executive assistant to the Long Beach city manager and said it could work just as well for Los Angeles County.

“There’s nothing so unequal as equal treatment for unequal performance,” Hankla said. “This is a method for recognizing performance.”

Going further, Supervisor Antonovich said it was time to shake up “entrenched bureaucrats . . . who tend to be responsible to no one because of the protections they enjoy under the civil service system.”

Hankla said that a number of cities and counties have adopted similar plans and that three Southern California cities--Anaheim, Costa Mesa and West Covina--have no civil service employees at all.

Not Enough Carrot

The prospect of more cash isn’t enough of a carrot for some county managers, however, who charge that leaving the civil service system could open them up to undue pressure from their supervisors.

“I won’t do it,” Mark H. Bloodgood, 60, the county’s veteran auditor-controller, told The Times. “My position should have a certain amount of independence. I could get into some kind of conflict with the supervisors who might not be particularly happy with something I do.”

But Paul B. Engler, the county’s agriculture commissioner, said he was taking a “wait-and-see” posture “to see what the benefits are. I think it could help improve management in the county.”

Opinions vary widely as to the measure’s cost. No cost analysis for the voters is available from the county. Supporters contend that none is needed.

Cost Is Zero, Supporters Say

“It will cost nothing,” the supporters say in their ballot argument, which is signed by Schabarum, two county government efficiency and productivity panels, the Los Angeles Taxpayers Assn. and Ross Clayton, dean of USC’s School of Public Administration.

Any performance bonuses or increased benefits would “be financed out of current budget allocations,” Hankla said, implying there would have to be some budget squeezing to make the plan work.

Critic Hahn estimates that the proposal will cost about $4 million, a figure arrived at by taking the average salary for the 1,500 affected positions--in the $50,000 range--and assuming 5% individual bonuses.

“Yes, that’s reasonable,” said Los Angeles County Counsel DeWitt W. Clinton of Hahn’s estimate. “I think if you have a merit program, you will have to have (cash) incentives which are sufficient to encourage accelerated performance. That’s not a monumental amount.”