County Executives’ Pay Raises--From 0 to 9%

About 450 Los Angeles County executives participating in the first phase of a new merit pay plan may receive raises this year that are up to double the fixed Civil Service amount--or they may get no raise at all.

Under the new incentive system, the executives, including all 38 appointed department heads, will be eligible for annual wage increases of up to 9%, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer John Shirey said Tuesday. That compares to an average salary increase of 4.5% for the county’s 74,000 other employees, he said.

In December, when the Board of Supervisors endorsed a merit pay plan, the maximum wage increase that the 450 managers could receive was left undecided. But Tuesday the supervisors approved without comment a $1.7-million budget for merit increases for the 1987-88 fiscal year.

That, said Shirey, means the affected managers will receive an average increase of 5.5% after their 1987 performances are evaluated by superiors this summer, though individual raises will depend on performance.

An average increase of 5.5%, instead of the 4.5% granted the rest of the county work force, is necessary to keep the county competitive with other government agencies and private industry, said James C. Hankla, chief administrative officer, in a report.

Another consideration, Hankla said in an interview, is that “we want the average county worker to move into the pay performance (merit) plan.”

Shirey said the county plans to convert about 3,000 managers not covered by union contracts to the merit plan in three phases by July, 1988. As many as 1,200 managers will be added to the program July 1, and perhaps 1,200 a year later, he said. In all, 6,100 county workers are not represented by unions.

Under the merit system, managers receive no pay raises for seniority and do not get the annual increases that are guaranteed nearly all other workers. Raises will be based purely on job performance.

“We are going to give people incentive to do a good job and to penalize those who do a rotten job. All of that is missing now,” Shirey said.

The merit pay program will allow raises only if managers reach or surpass specific goals set by them and their superiors at the beginning of each year. Using a four-category rating system, department heads will decide whether an employee’s performance failed to meet expectations, met expectations, exceeded expectations or far exceeded them.

Theoretically, department heads could give all managers the same ranking and recommend 5.5% raises for each one, said Shirey. “But that would cheapen the amount of money his high performers would receive,” he said.

Department heads must also be reviewed by their boss, the chief administrative officer, whose performance is in turn reviewed by the Board of Supervisors.

With a 9% increase, Richard B. Dixon, who becomes chief administrative officer March 1 with a $105,000 annual salary, could receive a pay increase of about $9,450.

The merit pay plan emerged from a failed ballot measure last June that would have taken Civil Service job protection away from about 1,500 top county managers and placed them on the merit raise plan.

The County Charter allows the supervisors to institute merit pay raises, but a popular vote is required to remove Civil Service protection.