32% Pay Raises Urged for Mayor and City Council

An advisory panel appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council voted Tuesday to recommend 32% pay raises over the next three years for the mayor, City Atty. James K. Hahn, Controller Rick Tuttle and the entire council, but tied the higher salaries to a ban on outside employment.

Coming at a time when Bradley’s financial affairs are being subjected to a series of investigations, the proposal would boost the mayor’s salary to $129,012 by 1992 from $97,654. Council members now earning $58,592--already among the highest paid in the country--would receive $77,407. Tuttle, who earns the same salary as council members, would receive the same increase, while Hahn, now earning $83,006, would be paid $109,660.

The panel’s recommendations would have to win the approval of the City Council, mayor and voters.

In addition to boosting salaries, the advisory group proposed taking pay raises out of the council’s hands, tying them instead to increases granted by the state Legislature to municipal judges. The proposal would make council salaries identical to those of the judges, and would establish permanent ratios between the council salaries and those of the other elected city officials. Council pay, for example, would always be 60% of the mayor’s.

“If public officials are adequately compensated through official salaries, there is a lesser need for external sources of income and lesser probability of any questionable ties and activities,” said Victor Tabbush, an associate dean at UCLA’s Graduate School of Management and chairman of the Los Angeles Official Salaries Authority, in an interview Tuesday. “In that sense, our recommendation is very pertinent.”

Restricts Outside Pay

Under the proposal, Bradley and the other elected officials would be prohibited from accepting “other payment for their services” except from government boards and agencies. While that would appear to prohibit income from outside jobs, the recommendation does not address honoraria--pay for speeches and appearances before various groups--nor does it delve into the issue of private investments. A number of elected city officials accept fees for public appearances.

Tabbush said those matters should be discussed by an ethics panel recently set up by Bradley to rewrite the city’s ethics code.

Although few of the city’s elected officials have received income from other jobs--Tuttle is paid $338 a month to teach a community college history course--the issue of outside employment has been central to the investigation into Bradley’s financial affairs.

Far East National Bank last year paid Bradley $18,000 to serve as the only paid member of its advisory board, and Valley Federal Savings & Loan had paid him up to $24,000 a year since 1978 to serve as a director. After questions were raised about the posts, Bradley resigned from both boards and returned the $18,000 to Far East.

The salaries authority, a nine-member citizens committee appointed by Bradley and the City Council, is required by law to make recommendations every two years on salary increases. Under a City Charter amendment approved by voters in 1972, the authority is allowed to recommend maximum annual pay raises of 5%.

Tuesday’s recommendation goes well beyond that limit. It calls for 5% increases in each of the next two years. But in the third year, 1991-92, the officials would receive the remainder of the overall 32% salary increase, assuming that a Charter amendment is approved before then changing the current pay-setting system and prohibiting outside employment.

Political Impact

Authority members said they made the recommendation independent of Bradley’s current troubles, but several council members predicted the proposal will inevitably become embroiled in the political turmoil surrounding the mayor.

“This is a bad year for this kind of proposal,” Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said. “Under the best circumstances, the public would have a hard time endorsing a pay increase for elected officials. Under the circumstances of the mayor’s outside income, I think the political climate is disastrous for it.”

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, however, predicted that voters will react favorably because of the provision linking future raises to those of municipal judges.

“I think it is salable if it is done right,” Flores said. “The important part of this is not so much the increase, but taking the increase out of the hands of the council members. Also, I think it is very important, right now at least, to citizens that they get full-time work for full-time pay.”

Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said the mayor would not comment on the recommendation. He said Bradley has intentionally distanced himself from the authority’s work to ensure its independence. He added that Bradley “will reserve comment” until after the City Council has voted on the proposal.

In making the recommendation, the authority adopted a report prepared by Michael Nash. Nash, a prominent compensation consultant from Palos Verdes Estates, was paid $25,000 by the City Council to review the city’s system of setting salaries for elected officials. Nash concluded that all of the city’s elected officials are underpaid, and said the city attorney and controller are “significantly underpaid . . . by any standard, either private or public sector.”

Nash said Bradley’s pay increase would put the mayor on a par with the mayor of New York City, but he noted that Bradley would still earn less than at least half a dozen of his department managers. The highest-paid city employee is Clifton A. Moore, director of the Department of Airports, who earns $153,927.

Several members of the authority, fearful that low salaries discourage some qualified people from seeking elective office, said they voted for the pay increases to make up for a gradual erosion in the purchasing power of the salaries. Tabbush said that over the last 15 years the elected officials have actually suffered pay cuts of about 20% when the salaries are adjusted for inflation.

In comparison to the $58,592 annual salary of Los Angeles council members, municipal lawmakers in Detroit earn $57,770 while those in New York City are paid $55,000. The five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors earn $84,765.

Votes Against Increases

Two of the nine members of the advisory panel voted against the recommended increases. Elliott Johnson, a contract manager for Los Angeles County-UCLA Medical Center, said the increases were not large enough. Judith N. Frank, vice president for real estate development at Warner Bros., said 5% annual raises were sufficient and also complained that the proposed new system would do away with the authority’s important oversight responsibilities.

“By maintaining a little control instead of just giving it all to a mechanical way of doing things, we do have an opportunity . . . to signal how at least eight or nine citizens in the city of Los Angeles think these folks are doing,” Frank said.

Frank added that her view was influenced by a 10-hour electrical outage that affected her neighborhood Monday night. “I am kind of down on city performance. This is the second one in about three weeks.”