Ban Urged on Officials’ Early Retirement : Perks: A budget panel will ask county supervisors to exclude top administrators from golden handshake buyouts.

In an apparent move to save face, a budget committee of top Ventura County leaders on Tuesday agreed that elected officials and department heads should be prohibited from cashing in on the county’s golden handshake program.

Following the controversial early retirements in December of Sheriff John V. Gillespie and Auditor-Controller Norman R. Hawkes, both elected officials, the committee will ask the Board of Supervisors next week to ban 25 ranking administrators from participating in the program.

A majority of the supervisors already have signaled their support for the proposal, devised by Supervisors John K. Flynn and Maria VanderKolk.

“I don’t believe that as an elected official I would ever contemplate taking early retirement,” said Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who along with Supervisor Vicky Howard serves on the 12-member budget committee. “I was elected to serve a term. If for some reason I cannot serve a term, I’m not sure that the county owes me something extra.”

But the budget panel delayed taking a position on Flynn and VanderKolk’s widely criticized plan to slash pay and perks of county employees, despite a recommendation by a group of union leaders and county managers to reject the proposal.

The committee, which is charged with recommending to the board how the county should handle its fiscal crisis, is expected to address the matter at its meeting on April 21.

Although the committee took no decisive action on the salary and benefits issue, Flynn said he was pleased its members at least agreed to limit the golden handshake program.

Under the golden handshake program, Hawkes and Gillespie each received two years of service credit toward their pensions and a lump sum payment for a third year of service at a combined cost of $288,673, even though they had only two years left on their terms.

The decision to give them a three-year golden handshake was blasted by critics as a blatant waste of taxpayer funds.

H. Jere Robings, president of the Ventura County Alliance of Taxpayers, said county officials were trying to save face because of the controversy that followed the two top administrators’ early retirement.

“I don’t think they wanted to be embarrassed like that in the future,” Robings said. “They finally realized it’s not appropriate.”

Although none of the county’s ranking managers have expressed interest in early retirement, Flynn said the committee’s decision sends a strong message that the buyouts will no longer be allowed for top administrators.

“The last time we went through this, it was not handled very well at all,” Flynn said. “In fact to some degree it was abused and I don’t want to see that happen again.”

Howard said: “I think it was one of those things that happened, and we looked at it and said it was not a good thing to do.”

Flynn, meanwhile, said he still holds out hope that the county’s budget committee will give strong consideration to his and VanderKolk’s suggestion to cut pay of workers by 5% and slash perks in an effort to offset a $36-million loss in state funding.

“I think we are going to make some headway,” Flynn said. “I think more debate and discussion will lead us to the truth. We’ll finally arrive at a good answer.”

The two supervisors also are requesting that their colleagues consider eliminating all travel, implementing a mandatory hiring freeze, expanding the county’s budget hearings and cutting tuition and textbook reimbursements for all management employees.

Following seven hours of angry and sometimes tearful testimony on March 30, the supervisors unanimously agreed to refer Flynn and VanderKolk’s proposal to the budget committee.

In addition to Howard and Kildee, the committee includes Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, Auditor-Controller Thomas O. Mahon, Personnel Director Ron Komers, Health Care Agency Director Phillipp Wessels and five other department heads.

Komers told the budget committee that county managers and union leaders want the committee to reject the proposal to cut salaries and benefits.

“The budget should not be balanced on the backs of employees,” Komers said. “If there is less money, there should be less services.”

But Flynn said if the county does not take action to slice the employees’ compensation, it will be faced with large layoffs.

“Then we are balancing the budget on the backs of the employees who were laid off,” Flynn said. “I would prefer that we all suffer a little bit in order to avoid lots of layoffs.”