Decision Delayed on Supervisors’ Salary : Perks: Members of a citizens review panel say a consultant’s $10,000 report on pay in other counties is inadequate. They will meet again today.

A recommendation on how much Ventura County supervisors should be paid was delayed Tuesday after a citizens review panel discovered that a $10,000 county study did not contain the comparative figures for supervisors in other counties that it had requested.

The omission in the report, overseen by county Personnel Director Ron Komers, sparked sharp criticism from some panel members who said most of the information in the report appears to be useless. They told Komers to get information on the total compensation packages of supervisors in Contra Costa, Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin and San Mateo counties by today.

“This puts us planted firmly in midair,” said committee member John J. Hunter, a retired Municipal Court judge. “It’s hard to talk about salary . . . until we actually see those figures.”

In addition to leaving out the data on the supervisors, Komers sought salary comparisons for only two of the county’s elected officials--a move that also drew complaints from committee members.

Panel member Lindsay Nielson, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., called the 36-page consultant’s report “worthless.”

“It was an expenditure of taxpayers’ money that would have been better served to pay someone’s hospital bills,” Nielson said. “This has no value at all to us. . . . It doesn’t even include the positions we were interested in.”

Members of the panel--which was formed amid public controversy over the disclosure that top officials were receiving large perks--said they hoped to resolve the supervisors’ salary issue when they meet again at 7 a.m. today at the government center.

Last week, the group recommended the elimination of all the controversial perks offered to the five board members. They also agreed that the supervisors’ salaries should be tied to those set by the state for Superior Court judges and not be determined in the future by the board. The salaries would be pegged to a percentage of what the judges earn.

On Tuesday, the panel reaffirmed the decisions it made last week and decided that the three largest perks paid to other elected officials should be folded into base pay. They agreed to take the issue up in more detail later this week after determining the supervisors’ pay.

Komers defended the consultant’s study, saying it addresses jobs that are traditionally used as “benchmarks” for setting county salaries. The document includes comparisons for the county’s chief administrative officer, health care agency director and public works director, as well as the elected positions of district attorney and auditor-controller.

“We tried to pick jobs that are easily matched by comparison,” Komers said.

He said he decided against requesting that the consultant--the Skopos Consulting Group of Woodland Hills--compare the supervisors’ compensation packages because he gave the panelists base salary information about supervisors in other counties several weeks ago. That information did not include how much each supervisors’ perks were worth.

Komers also provided the panelists with an insert to the report Tuesday that showed that the average compensation package for Ventura County supervisors is $86,386. According to his survey of 11 other counties--including Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties--the average pay and benefits package for supervisors was $87,149.

“I thought the survey data we had compiled would be enough,” he said.

But Nielson accused Komers of trying to “guide” the panel’s decision by not providing the information it had requested.

“This is an example of where county staff jumped the gun and gave us what they wanted to give us,” he said. “For weeks, we have been focusing on the supervisors’ pay. I thought it was clear that we wanted the salary information from the five counties we selected.”

Komers said the added data on the supervisors would be ready in time for the panel meeting. But he said he was unsure whether the county would be charged for the added work.

“It requires a separate set of calculations,” he said.

Overall, the report found that almost all the Ventura County positions studied have larger compensation packages than found in other counties.

For example, Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg’s total compensation package--$183,782 last year--is 21% larger than an average of his colleagues in Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties. It was 9% higher than the average salary of the chief administrative officers in the six other Southern California counties.

County Public Works Director Art Goulet’s compensation package--$128,147 last year--was 28% higher than public works directors in the five counties that the panel had identified and 6% larger than the average of the Southern California counties.

County Health Care Agency Director Phillipp Wessels, who had a pay package of $146,380, received 9% more than his colleagues in the five other counties. But his pay was 4% less than that of the average health care administrator in the Southern California counties, according to the report.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who received $136,209 in pay and benefits last year, received about 14% more than the district attorneys in five other counties. He received 3% more than his counterparts in the six Southern California counties.

County Auditor-Controller Norman R. Hawkes, who had a pay package of $126,394 last year, was 24% ahead of his colleagues in the five other counties and 5% ahead of other auditor-controllers in Southern California, according to the report.

However, the report found that on average, Ventura County salaries lag dramatically behind those of private industry.

Although several members of the panel criticized the report Tuesday, panelist Tom Bryson, a general manager for Southern California Edison, defended it.

“There is more information than what I would like to have . . . but it doesn’t bother me,” Bryson said. “It’s just a matter of getting what we want. It’s not an issue.”