Health Bonus for Officials to Be Reviewed : Budgets: Critics question spending an estimated $75,000 to induce hundreds of county managers to get physicals. An official defends the perk as necessary for effective government.

A little-known management perquisite called the “wellness bonus” is being scrutinized by Ventura County amid efforts to maintain a budget free of red ink.

For five years, 881 county managers have been eligible for the bonus--up to $300 annually--as a reward for taking a physical examination.

The County Board of Supervisors wants to know if the bonus--which may be costing the county $75,000 or more a year--is a frill during times when money is tight.

At first, county personnel chief Ronald W. Komers said he thought that the bonus could be eliminated. But Komers said he will recommend leaving the bonus intact because it contributes to healthy, effective government management.

In an interview last week, Komers said he has concluded that the bonus program is cost-effective because it saves lives by catching potentially serious medical problems in their infancy.

Not everybody agrees, including some of those who are eligible for the bonus. C. Toy White, the county’s assistant district attorney, is one.

“I think it’s appropriate for managers to take physicals and keep healthy,” she said. “But I’d like to think I’m adult enough to do it without the bonus.”

The perk allows managers, including about 300 attorneys in the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, to either get a free physical performed by a doctor on the county payroll or to see their own physician and be reimbursed for part or all of the expense.

The reimbursement is $175 for managers under the age of 40, $225 for those between the ages of 40 and 44 and $300 for those 45 or older.

Atop that subsidy is the wellness bonus.

Managers under 40 years old are eligible for a $175 bonus every 36 months. Those between the ages of 40 and 44 can receive a $225 bonus twice for two exams, and those 45 and older can pocket a $300 bonus every year for taking a physical.

Komers said he believes that about 250 county managers take the bonus.

Los Angeles County, where last year the chief fiscal officer and supervisors rang up a $117,000 tab for items such as gourmet meals and flowers, does not offer the perk. “But it’s the only one we’ve missed,” said Pam Everett, a Los Angeles County public affairs officer, when informed of it.

The bonus is a sensitive subject for the managers whose annual pay ranges from $26,844 to the top salary of $123,630 for the chief administrative officer.

A sampling of Ventura County managers produced some long pauses on the telephone when a reporter asked if they needed the $300 to motivate them to take a regular physical. One department manager declined to comment at all on whether he takes the bonus.

Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg said he thinks that he took the bonus once. That time, he said, he applied the bonus toward a more elaborate exam conducted by his own doctor.

Both Ventura County Sheriff John Gillespie and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said they take a free annual physical conducted by the county’s physician, Dr. Philip Schofield. Then, they said, they get a more elaborate exam from a private physician and apply the $300 toward that medical bill.

“I don’t think it’s fat, at least not the way I use it,” Gillespie said of the bonus.

Bradbury said the bonus is “not going to make one whit of difference” in whether he gets his annual checkup. He said he will get the physical, with or without the bonus.

Komers said he too usually undergoes annual medical exams and then accepts the bonus.

“But I didn’t take one last year,” he said. “I wasn’t motivated.”

Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee said she accepts the $300 bonus and, like Gillespie and Bradbury, uses it to augment the cost of a private exam.

But two of her colleagues--Supervisors Maria VanderKolk and Susan K. Lacey--said they don’t take annual physicals, and they don’t see the $300 bonus as a compelling reason to do so.

“People ought to be able to take a physical and not be paid to do so,” VanderKolk said.

“I would take a look at cutting (the bonus),” Lacey said.

Critics of the bonus cite county figures showing that managers’ health, retirement and vacation benefits already amount to the equivalent of 30% of their salaries.

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey for 1990 for managers in the private sector showed that benefits total the equivalent of 38.4% of their salaries.

“It’s ludicrous,” Jere Robings, executive director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., said of the wellness bonus “There are so many (management perks) in county government that this one just blows my mind.”

But Komers said his just-completed study proves that the bonus is justified.

Of the county’s 881 managers, he said, 487 are over 45 and therefore eligible for the annual $300 bonus after taking the physical, which is not covered by the county medical insurance program.

Komers noted that the county spends about $25 million annually on health costs for all employees, management and non-management. So, he said, the $300 incentive bonus is worthwhile to control spiraling health costs.

Before the bonus was put in place five years ago, Komers said, only about 50 managers a year took physicals. Now, he said, his study shows that about five times that many are getting checkups.

Komers said annual checkups have detected several potentially serious problems, including cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension and hearing loss.

But the bonus should not be given to all employees, just management, Komers added. “The county has a tremendous investment in its long-tenured managers.”

Mary Ann Kiely, a health care expert in Newport Beach, said private industry, too, looks for health incentives for their executives.

But Kiely, who works for Illinois-based Hewitt Associates, an employee benefits consulting firm, said she hasn’t heard of any private-sector firm offering hard cash as an incentive to see a doctor on an annual basis.

“There are pretty lean times out there,” she said. “Companies are being very careful about the incentives they’re offering to get the most for their money.”