City Workers Grow Angry Over Perks for Top Managers : Budget: Torrance says it can’t afford to give across-the-board raises, but it will continue to pay bonuses and car allowence and grant leave to department heads.

Despite Torrance’s worst budget crunch in more than a decade, the city still plans to pay department heads such perks as $446-a-month car allowance and thousands of dollars in year-end bonuses.

That angers rank-and-file city employees, who are being told that the city cannot afford to give across-the-board raises in the upcoming year. Some employees are decrying what they call a two-tiered pay system that insulates managers from budget cuts.

“There’s obviously a double standard,” said Patrick Astredo, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the local representing 425 city public works and other employees.

Employees are especially critical of three kinds of benefits accorded top-ranking Torrance officials: car allowances, annual bonuses and a so-called “administrative leave” system that allows top managers to convert up to 36 days of leave into cash annually.

City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson said he does not know how much the city paid out in administrative leave days in 1991, and a total was not immediately available from the finance director’s office. The Times has requested that the city disclose the amounts paid to individual managers, and City Atty. Kenneth L. Nelson said he is researching the matter.

However, a number of Torrance department heads earn base salaries of $60,000 or more, meaning their year-end payouts could amount to thousands of dollars.

Sufficient money for all three types of benefits are included in the proposed 1992-93 budget, said Jackson, who defends the benefits as a means of making Torrance competitive with other cities in paying its top managers.

However, the city’s $148-million budget, which Jackson calls the tightest in 14 years, does not provide across-the-board raises for the city’s approximately 1,500 employees. And although the budget includes increased funding for employee health insurance, it shaves $300,000 in overtime costs.

Mayor Katy Geissert also pointed out that no Torrance employees will be laid off, as other financially strapped South Bay cities have done to balance their budgets.

The budget has been reviewed by City Council members, and it may be approved immediately after a June 16 public hearing.

City officials lay blame for the austere budget climate on the recession, which has driven down the sales-tax revenues on which Torrance heavily relies.

The city also was stung financially by recent multimillion-dollar legal settlements and the discovery in mid-December that $6.2 million of city funds was missing in an investment scandal.

Meanwhile, contracts for a number of city unions, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, will expire on June 30, and dozens of city employees attended a Tuesday City Council meeting to hear AFSCME representatives call on the city to rethink its budget priorities.

“We’re hoping the council will scrutinize these types of expenditures,” said Guido De Rienzo, staff representative for AFSCME Council 36, in an interview Wednesday. He singled out the administrative leave cash-out system and car allowances for criticism.

“If they are, as they claim, in economic distress, then everyone has to make the sacrifice, and it has to be across the board,” De Rienzo said.

However, Geissert defended the benefits for the city’s top managers, saying, “We have accepted the system on the theory it’s important to have a strong management team. And we do have a strong management team.”

The Torrance administrative leave system is far more generous than that offered in six other medium or large cities in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to officials of those cities.

But Jackson on Wednesday strongly defended the system, saying the payouts should not be viewed in isolation because they are part of a compensation benefit package for managers.

Torrance’s 15 department heads and some other top salaried managers receive either 24 or 36 days a year in “administrative leave” that is intended to compensate them “for overtime work, administrative responsibility or attendance at night meetings,” according to city records. The benefit is given in addition to vacation days.

If managers do not use the days, they can cash them out quarterly or at the end of the year. Most managers cash out at least some of the leave days, Jackson said.

A check of eight nearby large cities found that six of them--Glendale, Inglewood, Burbank, Long Beach, Redondo Beach and Huntington Beach--also offer a management leave program. But the cities do not allow more than 10 or 12 days’ leave in a single year or permit employees to convert the time to cash.

In Huntington Beach, some top managers are allowed up to eight days’ leave annually but cannot cash out the time or carry it over to the next year. “Some use it, some don’t,” personnel director William Osness said.

Torrance officials counter that their department heads’ salaries would be lower than those in some other area cities without the extra benefit of administrative leave.

“It’s part of the total package,” said Liz Rojas, assistant to Jackson. “If you take out the ‘A.L.,’ we drop considerably.”

Some employees also are criticizing an annual bonus program that last year awarded a total of $29,700 in bonuses to top managers, $26,250 to other managers and $9,650 to members of the city manager’s staff. The size of the bonuses ranged from $500 to $2,700, according to city records.

Councilwoman Maureen O’Donnell wants the bonuses eliminated.

“I don’t think the taxpayers want their money used in that way,” O’Donnell said, adding that management bonuses are demoralizing to rank-and-file employees. “These managers are in high-paying positions. They’re paid for their responsibility,” she said.

NEXT STEP

The public may comment on Torrance’s budget at a joint City Council/Redevelopment Agency meeting that begins at 5:30 tonight. A formal public hearing on the budget will be held at 5:30 p.m. June 16, after which the council may adopt the spending plan. Both meetings will be held in the council chambers at Torrance City Hall, 3031 Torrance Blvd.