Suddenly, Hickey Has 2 Job Offers : Government: St. Petersburg, Fla., offers him city manager post. San Diego County counters with offer of new 2-year contract for the chief administrative officer.

After a 17-month impasse in negotiations on his employment contract, San Diego County Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey has received two job offers--a new post and his current one.

The city council in St. Petersburg, Fla., voted Tuesday to offer the 64-year-old Hickey the $100,000-a-year post of city manager there.

And, in response to Hickey’s search for several government jobs in Florida over the past several months, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has offered Hickey a new two-year contract, Supervisor Brian Bilbray said Tuesday.

Hickey, who earns $134,000 annually and has worked for San Diego County for six years, could not be reached for comment. County spokesman Bob Lerner said Hickey has not yet made a decision.

“He has indicated that he wants to examine in greater detail the specifics of the St. Petersburg offer or any potential offer from the Board of Supervisors,” Lerner said.

Bilbray said the board made its new offer in a discussion with Hickey last week. A formal two-year contract proposal was delivered to Hickey’s office Tuesday, according to a county official who asked to remain anonymous.

“The consensus was that we’d like to keep him,” Bilbray said. “We told him: ‘If you want to stay, we want you to stay.’ ”

But the county’s new offer still does not contain the controversial clause that has been the sticking point in negotiations with Hickey: a provision that would allow him to step down in January, 1993, but remain as a $26-a-year special employee for three years.

That arrangement would have given Hickey the 10 years of service he needs to be vested in the county’s pension plan. The board balked at the proposal, which has become particularly sensitive because of the county’s budget woes.

Hickey has expressed interest in returning to Florida because he lived there for 30 years before coming to San Diego. He has been working on a handshake agreement since October, 1990.

The St. Petersburg council narrowly decided to choose Hickey over another, younger finalist, Councilwoman Leslie Curran said in an interview Tuesday night. The council first voted, 5 to 4, in Hickey’s favor, then selected him unanimously in a second vote.

Curran said she told Hickey during his final interview Monday that she was leaning against voting for him.

“I told him, ‘You have 30 minutes to change my mind,’ ” she said. “And he did.”

Curran said she believes the St. Petersburg contract offer contains some type of retirement benefits, but she did not know the details. The $100,000 limit on salary is firm, she said, but she felt Hickey was interested nonetheless because the cost of living there is lower than in San Diego.

Council members agreed that Hickey’s many years of experience and his reputation for honesty and consensus-building are needed in St. Petersburg, Curran said.

The city of 250,000 has been divided by racial tensions over the recent firing of its police chief. It also has had to contend with two city managers who left after questions were raised about their ethics, Curran said.

“He was what we needed: a mediator, a problem-solver who can bring this city together,” she said.