Supervisors to Review Travel Stipend : Budget: Move comes after Gloria Molina calls the allowance for personal vehicles a hidden bonus and says it has been used to inflate pensions.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously ordered a review of transportation allowances of up to $5,300 a year being paid to 486 top bureaucrats, regardless of whether they use their personal cars for county business.

The review was sought by Supervisor Gloria Molina, who called the stipend a hidden bonus for executives and complained that it has been improperly used to inflate pensions.

The decision to review the travel allowance came only a day after supervisors retreated from another controversial spending practice--using taxpayer funds to buy $40-a-person gourmet lunches.

Board Chairman Deane Dana on Monday ordered that supervisors buy sandwiches for working lunches from either the county cafeteria, a trendy coffee bar called Pasqua or Philippe, known for its French dip and 11-cent cup of coffee.

Molina, who has spent much of her first year in office criticizing the perks given to county officials, said she did not want to do away with the travel allowance but would like to see it limited to employees who use their personal cars for county business.

Dixon has defended the transportation allowance as necessary for hiring and keeping good managers. He also has said that before the allowance was offered, the same managers were entitled to a county car--even if they used it only to commute between home and work.

Molina scoffed at the idea that managers earning $100,000 a year would leave county service if denied the travel allowance.

“I remember Mr. Dixon telling me that we’re not giving salary increases this year because there are plenty of people looking for jobs,” she said to the applause of hundreds of county workers who attended the meeting to protest the county’s salary proposals.

Dixon was in Washington on Tuesday lobbying for federal aid, but his chief assistant, Mary Jung, said the travel allowance has reduced the county fleet by 600 cars for a annual saving of $5 million. The transportation allowance, established five years ago, cost the county $2.7 million a year.

Molina complained that by adding the allowance to the base pay in calculating pensions, it is costing additional millions of dollars.

County Counsel DeWitt Clinton said state law requires supervisors to add the allowance to pension calculations. But an aide to Molina said that the supervisor’s staff has surveyed other counties and found that they do not use the travel allowance to increase retirement pay. The board asked Clinton to review his legal opinion.

In a related development, Dixon recommended against preparing a $12-billion county budget with the kind of detail sought by Molina, contending that a document with so-called “line-item detail” on spending would “overwhelm sound decision-making.”

But an aide for Molina said that the supervisor will press her colleagues to support her request for a more detailed budget.

Dixon also recommended against changing the way supervisors budget for their own offices, saying that the current system of including all five supervisors’ office expenses in a single $33-million board budget is “least costly and has served the county well.”

Molina last year proposed that the supervisors consider establishing separate office budgets for each supervisor.

Her proposal followed Times reports that there are no spending limits on each supervisorial office and that the precise amount spent by each supervisor for office furnishings, travel and other items is not readily available.