Woo Claims Support for Paring Down Pay Raises : City Council: He says he has at least eight votes to reduce the proposed salary increase and make it more acceptable to voters.

A majority of Los Angeles City Council members have indicated that they will vote to reduce the $32,822 pay raise they are requesting as part of a city ethics reform package, Councilman Michael Woo said Tuesday.

Woo plans to introduce a motion today asking council members to cut their pay-raise request by $8,188, a move intended to make the entire ethics package more palatable to the voters.

The pay-raise request, to be placed on the June ballot, will be tied to proposals for public financing of political campaigns, a ban on outside work and honorariums for elected officials, and restrictions on gifts they may receive. Voters must approve a pay raise if they want to adopt the reforms.

The pay raise was not part of the original ethics-reform package proposed by Woo and a citizen’s commission in January. Instead, a pay-raise request was inserted into the package last month by the council and increased two weeks ago.

Backers and opponents say the fate of the entire reform package may hinge on the public’s willingness to approve a raise for council members, who now are paid $61,522 a year. Council members are the highest paid in the country, according to a Times survey.

Woo, who has been shepherding the reforms through the council, said Tuesday that he has lined up at least eight votes for scaling the new salary back to $86,156--a 40% raise and the annual salary of Municipal Court judges. Council members decided two weeks ago to ask the voters for a $32,822 pay raise--53%--that would bring their annual salaries to the level of Superior Court judges, who now get $94,344. Woo has since been lobbying his colleagues in an attempt to persuade eight of the 15 council members to go along with a smaller request.

“I think we’ve got at least eight (votes). That’s all we need,” Woo said Tuesday. “There are some members who would like a larger raise, but on the other hand, you have to consider what would be easier to get the voters to support.

“I think indexing salaries to Municipal Court salaries is easier to sell (to the voters) than Superior Court salaries.”

Last year, the city’s salary commission recommended that council salaries be raised to the level of Municipal Court judges and future raises be tied to that level.

The council was to have completed the ballot measure Tuesday, but because of a last-minute flood of amendments the matter was put off until today--the deadline for getting the measure on the June ballot.

Many of the amendments are technical changes, but a number, including Woo’s pay-raise motion, could alter the package significantly.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, a vocal opponent of some elements of the reform, said she will renew a request that the proposed ban on outside work be eliminated.

“I’m still concerned about the discrimination between earned income and unearned income,” Galanter said.

As the proposal now stands, elected officials may not be paid in return for outside work but still could receive income on investments, the councilwoman noted. “The only outside income that’s banned is earned income,” she said. “You can spend all day on the phone manipulating your stock portfolio and making outside income and there’s no problem. . . .

“But if you want to get it the old-fashioned way, it’s considered, on the face of it, a conflict of interest.”

Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who opposes public financing of political campaigns, said he intends to seek a change in ballot language that will make clear to the voters that public money would be used for campaigns.

Bernardi also will make another attempt to have the major elements of the package split into separate ballot measures to give the voters greater choice.

An amendment offered by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky will seek to reduce the pension benefits of anyone who does not accept the pay raise, if it is approved by the voters.

The measure apparently is aimed at Mayor Tom Bradley, who has vowed to turn his raise over to charity.