Supervisors Set Sights on Excessive Pay Raise

The members of the Board of Supervisors have taken the first step toward enacting an ordinance that will raise their salaries 25% during the next year. If, as is expected, the supervisors follow up Wednesday with final approval, they will receive a 14% increase, from $65,874 to $75,296; another raise next July 1 will bring their pay to $82,054. That would make four increases totaling more than $20,000, almost 33%, in 2 1/2 years.

Considering that Orange County’s median household income is about $40,000, even at their present $65,874 the supervisors are not food-bank candidates. Without the proposed raise Orange County already has the second-best-paid board in the state. Only Los Angeles County, with a population more than three times as large, pays its supervisors more, $89,851. San Diego County, with about 100,000 more people, pays its board members a bit less, $65,600.

The supervisors can earn even more sitting on various government boards and agencies. During 1988 those amounts ranged from $4,360 to $10,165.

Beyond the numbers themselves, there are some troubling aspects about these raises. First, the timing is atrocious. The county faces a $25-million budget shortfall. If the state fails to make up the difference, layoffs are possible. Handing county workers pink slips to close a deficit while increasing their own salaries would not give the supervisors the moral high ground. In fact, it would be indefensible.

The pay-increase item on the board’s agenda was unencumbered by any mention of the supervisors. No outsider, looking at the agenda, would have known what was at stake. The board clearly hoped this item would slip by like the stealth bomber, undetected by unfriendly radar.

Finally, the supervisors want to tie future raises to those of municipal judges, which are granted by the Legislature. This amounts to an exercise in political buck-passing, and is the wrong approach for at least two reasons.

Judges’ and supervisors’ duties are dissimilar and should not be rewarded at the same time for the same reasons. Also, legislatively determined raises move control of this intensely local matter to Sacramento. The power to set their salaries was given to the supervisors so local taxpayers could exert some pressure.

Even so, there is nothing in the ordinance to prevent some future board from unilaterally increasing its pay if it deems judicial increases insufficient. This ploy seems one-sided and designed to avoid political heat. At least one board member likes the legislative tether because, in the past, the supervisors have been reluctant to vote for increases for fear of voter backlash. But a little fear in an elected official’s mind is not a bad thing.

A more equitable increase would be something along the lines of the 4.3% received by county workers earlier this month. And future considerations should be made here, not in Sacramento, and at meetings about which the public has been forthrightly informed.