County Board Delays Extra Pay : Government: The $392-a-month stipend at a time of budget cuts stirred a political outcry. The supervisors decide not to take their ‘development allowance’ until Jan. 1.

Seeking to minimize political fallout, Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday delayed until next year the start of a $392-a-month “professional development allowance” they have voted to give themselves and other county executives.

The supervisors, who have been severely criticized for approving the allowance with budget cuts looming, dropped a provision that would have made the allowance retroactive to last July 1. Now, the allowance will go into effect this July 1 for 238 Superior Court judges and Jan. 1 for the five supervisors and 33 county department heads.

Supervisor Gloria Molina, a newcomer to the board, cast the lone dissenting vote. Molina said she will refuse to accept the allowance while the county faces budget cuts. “I think it’s disgraceful for any member to take it when we know that we’re going to have to make cuts,” she said.

The allowance is intended to help executives pay for books, seminars and home computers, but there is no requirement for an accounting of how funds are spent. Molina has characterized it as a 4% pay raise that will boost the supervisors’ salary to $104,001 a year when the county budget provides for no pay raise for workers whose contracts expire on Sept. 30.

Supervisor Ed Edelman proposed changing the effective date of the allowance, citing the more than 100 phone calls his office had received from taxpayers protesting the stipend.

“I would agree this sends a signal that we’re in great shape financially” if county executives begin receiving the allowance before the county’s budget problems are resolved, Edelman said. “The timing was not best. We’re not in great shape.”

But Edelman, joined by Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Kenneth Hahn, was unwilling to drop the allowance altogether.

Edelman argued that because the board had approved the allowance for Municipal Court judges, Superior Court judges were entitled to receive it. Supervisors, he said, should also receive the allowance because their benefits have traditionally been tied to those of Superior Court judges.

“It’s a minimal amount,” Edelman added, estimating the cost of extending the allowance to supervisors at $24,000 a year. The annual cost of the allowance for the judges and county executives is about $1 million.

Jeffrey White, a Long Beach resident who serves on the board of a child abuse protection center, said: “Your funds from that $1.2 million would service our center for 15 years. . . . If you provided us an endowment of $1.2 million, we could live off the interest.”

Molina also objected to the board’s approval of an automatic cost-of-living increase in the allowance every year. She pointed out that the proposed state budget provides for no increase in benefits for welfare recipients.

Antonovich has said that he will give his allowance to charity, and Hahn has said that he will return it to the county treasury. Supervisor Deane Dana has been absent for the votes on the allowance.