Wages of Governing Explode for Officials : Executives: Thousand Oaks applies ‘golden handcuff’--large salaries--to administrators to prevent them from leaving for other jobs.

In the world of city management, it is increasingly a seller’s market. And cities in Ventura County are beginning to pay the price.

When William Little was hired as Camarillo city manager in late 1988, he left a much larger city--and still got a $10,000 raise.

Last fall, after a lengthy search for a new city attorney, Ventura lured Peter Bulens into the fold by agreeing to lend him $100,000 to help him buy a house.

And in Thousand Oaks, where City Manager Grant Brimhall receives $109,488 a year, the highest municipal salary in the county, it is policy to pay top administrators so well that the city’s “golden handcuff” will keep them from applying elsewhere.

“The irony of the situation is that I have people say, ‘How in the world do you live on that?’ and others who say, ‘Boy, I wish I made your salary,’ ” said Brimhall, past president of the statewide city managers’ association.

The wages of many top city and county administrators have risen sharply throughout the state in recent years, partly in response to escalating pay packages offered by private industry, public management experts say.

“What we’re seeing in the last several years is that city managers are looked at more like chief executive officers in private industry,” said Sheri Erlewine, spokeswoman for the League of California Cities. “The job is tougher, more complex today. The issues are local and regional. And councils know they have to pay their managers more.”

High housing prices in coastal urban areas such as Ventura County are forcing city councils to pay salaries they would not have considered just two or three years ago, professional recruiters say.

“It’s a very fast-changing market,” said Norman Roberts of Los Angeles, who helped bring Bulens from the San Francisco Bay Area to Ventura and is directing the search for a new city manager in Oxnard.

“You are looking at city managers who are making 15% to 20% more than they were two years ago,” he said. “And that’s a lot when you’re talking about $100,000 salaries.”

Some government executives in the Bay Area, including Santa Clara County’s chief administrative officer, make nearly $150,000 annually and receive housing subsidies, he said. Los Angeles County’s chief administrator makes about $138,000, up from $98,000 in 1987.

Roberts figures that Oxnard will have to increase its city manager’s pay perhaps $10,000 to hire a top applicant to replace David R. Mora, who receives $103,200 a year. There are about 50 candidates so far and recruiting continues, he said. Mora, who was fired, leaves June 30.

Roberts compares today’s volatile market for city and county managers and attorneys to the free-agency system in major league baseball.

“The changes seem to happen when they hire somebody new,” Roberts said. Or, less frequently, when cities want to keep a popular manager whose skill is undisputed and who is the target of recruiters.

Richard Wittenberg, Ventura County’s chief administrative officer, has benefited from employers’ new aggressiveness in retaining top managers. With a salary of $117,720, he earns the top dollar allowed by the county’s pay scale and is the area’s best paid government official. He also makes more than several of the chief administrators in the state’s 10 largest counties. Ventura is the 11th largest.

His worth apparently increased after he ranked first in a 1985 search for a new chief executive in Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest. After a political stalemate, a compromise candidate was eventually hired.

The next year, Wittenberg, chief executive here since 1978, received the first long-term contract ever awarded for his position by the Board of Supervisors. That four-year deal was extended late last year, months before the contract expired, until mid-1994.

Little typifies the free-agent manager whose talents fit the needs of a city. Camarillo needed a fiscal expert to reverse a $4.2-million budget deficit created by disastrous bond investments. Little, a 25-year city manager, knew finance.

So Camarillo agreed to a salary of nearly $100,000 a year, well above the market and nearly $10,000 more than Little said he made in the city of Orange, which has twice the population.

“Look, a city has to pay for what it gets. That goes for police chiefs or directors of finance,” Little said. “Like any profession, you get what you pay for. And as far as I can tell, this has been a good match.”

Camarillo now has a modest budget surplus, said Little, whose salary is $102,552. Some of the city’s department heads are among the best paid in the county, especially considering that Camarillo has only about 50,000 residents.

If Little’s situation shows the allure of a fix-it manager from outside, Thousand Oaks’ treatment of Brimhall illustrates how a city can make a good manager want to settle down.

Hired in 1978, the 52-year-old Brimhall said he stays in government partly because he is motivated by the job in Thousand Oaks, a city he views as progressive, sophisticated and in tune with local issues. A recent opinion survey of city residents brought an unusually high 37% response, he said.

“To stay in the public sector takes a certain amount of masochistic behavior. You must be willing to work 60-hour weeks and live in a fishbowl,” Brimhall said. “But I enjoy the public life. And I was in the private sector before and made enough money so I can enjoy being a city manager.”

“I’ve been offered twice what I make now from several different types of companies--all the way from the family-owned to a Fortune 500,” he said.

Several of Brimhall’s assistants join him as top earners among local municipal employees. For example, Assistant City Manager MaryJane Lazz makes $88,164 a year, nearly $8,000 more than John Tooker in Oxnard, the county’s largest city.

That is by design, said Greg Eckman, personnel director for Thousand Oaks. Maximum management salaries there are set by averaging peak wages in 10 comparable cities, then adding 20%, he said.

“We call it the ‘golden handcuff,’ ” Eckman said. “We try to keep managers who are performing in an outstanding fashion. And we have the ability to pay, so we can make it difficult for them to leave. We don’t want to be a training ground for other employers.”

Indeed, Thousand Oaks has become something of a municipal raider of employee talent. Wittenberg grumbled that he has lost good people to the city. “We’re proud of that fact,” Eckman said. “We’ve picked up professional planners, engineers and accountants from the county.”

Ventura County, though an employer with more than 6,000 jobs--compared to 410 in Thousand Oaks--has fallen behind in pay and benefits for many employees, Wittenberg said. It has not been able to fill about 10% of its jobs, including numerous mid- and high-level positions, he said.

The area’s quality of life is attractive and wages are not bad, Wittenberg said, but housing prices kill deals with top job candidates.

“The good people can do as well elsewhere and buy a house for half the price,” Wittenberg said. “In my own office, I’ve tried to recruit people, and they’ve said it’s not worth it. They can’t do it.”

The high cost of shelter--the median price of a house locally is second in the state to the Bay Area--has effectively limited coastal cities and counties to recruiting among themselves. Or they can make their offers more attractive with housing subsidies, a common practice in private industry. Cities as small as Fillmore, which in 1985 lent a former city manager 85% of the price of a home, have made housing part of their offers.

Even then, recruitment from Northern California is hardly a sure thing because of a bias against Southern California, recruiters said. Roberts said he had to talk a reluctant Bulens onto a plane to Ventura last fall.

“He talked to me and he had to do a little convincing, because I thought this area was just more Los Angeles,” Bulens said. “After I got down there, I said, ‘No, this isn’t L.A., this is better.’ ”

Yet the former Mountain View city attorney said he would not have moved here for his $5,000 pay raise and a slightly larger staff without housing assistance.

The Ventura City Council made him its first beneficiary of an “equity sharing” deal. The city paid $100,000 toward Bulens’ purchase of a home and will get its money back when the house is sold. It will also get a share of the profit if the property’s value increases.

“It is a lot more difficult to move around in California than it used to be. Your field of search is narrowed,” Bulens said. Even with the subsidy, Bulens said, he has sleepless nights because of payments on a still-unsold home in the Bay Area.

Government attorneys may be the hottest commodities in the new market for top administrators, hiring specialists said.

Santa Barbara County, which is half the size of Ventura County, just hired a new counsel for $115,000 a year. Ventura County’s chief attorney, James McBride, makes $101,520.

“If you go out in that market for a county counsel, you really ought to grab your shorts, because it’s really competitive out there,” said Chuck Wagner, chief executive for Santa Barbara County.

Recruiter Roberts said there is a shortage of local government attorneys because many have gone to work for private firms that specialize in municipal law.

The legal work of six of 10 local cities is done through contract with private firms. Port Hueneme, for example, has $83,000 in its budget for legal services.

CITY SALARIES

City Asst. City City Manager Manager City Atty. Police Chief Camarillo $102,552 $72,336 $72,000* NA Fillmore $64,200 NA $24,000* NA Moorpark $75,000 $52,188 $80,500* NA Ojai $61,108 NA $50,875* NA Oxnard $103,200 $80,251 $77,112 $81,456 Port Hueneme $79,800 NA $83,000* $59,004 Santa Paula $63,698 NA $66,700* $60,294 Simi Valley $101,860 $72,420 $88,644 $81,216 Th. Oaks $109,488 $88,164 $83,004 NA Ventura $99,900 $78,121 $87,996 $80,102

NA: Not applicable

* Budgeted for private contract attorney

Engi- Planning/ neering/- Community City Fire Chief Public Works Development Finance Camarillo NA $63,444 $74,568 $60,396 Fillmore $39,504 $35,496 $47,724 $42,000 Moorpark NA $38,951 $54,791 $52,188 Ojai NA $51,192 $45,276 $35,664 Oxnard $77,808 $82,680 $74,292 $73,368 Port Hueneme NA $63,504 $58,596 $59,748 Santa Paula $45,931 $68,640 $48,228 $50,639 Simi Valley NA $82,608 $77,640 $70,200 Th. Oaks NA $74,904 $83,832 $83,088 Ventura $77,340 $78,120 $75,061 $71,761

NA: Not applicable

COUNTY SALARIES

1990 Salaries for department heads and supervisors

Department Department Heads Salary Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg $117,720 Medical Examiner/Coroner F. Warren Lovell 117,676 Health Care Agency Phillipp Wessels 101,530 District Attorney Michael Bradbury 101,520 County Counsel James McBride 101,520 Public Works Arthur Goulet 101,508 Assistant Chief Robert Hirtensteiner 96,590 Administrative Officer Public Defender Kenneth Clayman 94,260 Sheriff John Gillespie 94,284 Fire Chief Vacant (range) 72,072- $91,968 Court Administrator Sheila Gonzalez 91,936 Public Social Services James Isom 89,724 Auditor-Controller Norman Hawkes 87,552 Personnel Ronald Komers 85,404 Corrections Services F. William Forden 85,404 Resource Management Agency Tom Berg 85,404 General Services Peter Pedroff 85,404 Assessor Jerry Sanford 83,328 Information Systems George Mathews 83,316 County Clerk/Recorder Dick Dean 75,504 Treasurer-Tax Collector/ Harold Pittman 75,504 Public Administrator Public Guardian Library Services Agency Dixie D. Adeniran 75,480 Supervisor, District 1 Susan Lacey 47,844 Supervisor, District 2 Madge Schaefer 47,844 Supervisor, District 3 Maggie Erickson 47,844 Supervisor, District 4 James Dougherty 47,844 Supervisor, District 5 John Flynn 47,844

Source: County of Ventura