ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : No Raise Without Review

Some questioned the wisdom of the Board of Supervisors’ vote Tuesday to raise its members’ salaries 4% at a time when the county is forced to lay off workers. But being a supervisor is a full-time position, and the responsibilities of an increasingly complex job justify the $3,282 increase, to $85,336, especially in light of the fact that other county employees got the same percentage increase.

But while the supervisors properly took the heat publicly in this instance, they also quietly acted to remove future raises from direct public scrutiny. At the same time the supervisors raised their pay, they tied future increases to the average of the increases given their top managers in the previous year. That, in effect, will shield the board’s future pay raises. It’s the wrong way to do public business.

It is always a politically painful process for elected officials to raise their own salaries. Through the years, supervisors have been resourceful in finding ways to avoid being criticized. In 1970, the board gave itself a whopping raise and tried to tie it to that of state legislators, so that supervisors would not have to vote on raises. That move, an attempt to get around a state constitutional amendment that gave local taxpayers a voice in setting salaries, prompted a strong public reaction. The board retreated.

At Tuesday’s stormy hearing, Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez defended the pay raise and emphasized that the increase had come at the end of a “public process.” He told protesting taxpayers to look at the record and judge the board by its performance.

That’s how it should be done, not just this year, but every year. Future raises should be brought before the public and made to stand on their own merits, rather than being tied to raises given others--and for all practical purposes, hidden from public review.