Transit Board OKs Funds for Mills’ Job

The Metropolitan Transit Development Board tentatively agreed Thursday to pay its chairman, former State Sen. James Mills, $90,000 over the next three years, a decision that apparently makes Mills the first leader of a quasi-public agency in San Diego to earn such compensation.

In a move one board member called a “bargain” for the MTDB, the panel awarded Mills $30,000 a year for duties that include lobbying, speaking before community groups and private industry, helping to formulate MTDB policy and handling inquiries from the news media.

The agreement, which must be approved again by the same board in two weeks, calls for Mills to put in 1,040 hours of work each year--essentially a half-time job. It applies only to Mills and cannot be transferred to a successor without another vote of the board. The agreement runs through Dec. 31, 1990.

‘Long Overdue’

“I think that for this particular chairman, who has done so much for us, it’s long overdue,” said Gloria McColl, an MTDB member and San Diego’s deputy mayor. “I think with what he’s being paid under this, we’re getting a bargain.”

Mills, who was a state legislator for 22 years, has spent the better part of the last two decades campaigning for public transportation in California. In 1971, he wrote legislation that created a sales tax on gasoline to be spent on developing public transportation. In 1974, he wrote legislation that placed on the ballot a constitutional amendment dedicating separate gas tax revenue to rail transit systems.

In 1975, Mills wrote the bill that created the MTDB. He was appointed a member of the panel in 1983, after leaving the state Senate, and was named its chairman in 1985. Last year, he led the campaign for Proposition A, which raised $2.25 billion for county transportation improvements, $750 million of it for the trolley system.

Requested Compensation

Mills said that he approached MTDB officials with the request for compensation last year, telling them that if Proposition A were approved by voters it would require him to put in a great deal more time. Like other board members, Mills receives $100 for each meeting he attends.

“I said that I couldn’t put in the amount of work that I thought was appropriate unless I were paid for it,” Mills said Thursday. Last year, the state Legislature passed a bill amending MTDB’s governing laws to allow Mills to be paid.

Mark Nelson, executive director of the San Diego Taxpayers Assn., said that the MTDB decision makes Mills the county’s only paid leader of a quasi-governmental agency. Chairmen of the San Diego Assn. of Governments, the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners and local Planning Commissions receive only meeting payments, Nelson said.

Though he praised Mills’ talents, Nelson said his organization questions whether the payment “creates a troublesome precedent.”

MTDB members had no such qualms, suggesting that consultants would be paid many times more for the work Mills will do.

“If it wasn’t for Sen. Mills, we wouldn’t have the funding and we wouldn’t have the trolley today,” said San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor, an MTDB member.

Mills said that his other sources of income are investments, royalties from writings--including a recently published book--and $14,500 from a state pension that he shares with his ex-wife.