Gonzalez’s Raise Stirs Controversy

When some powerful judges from across the state tried to cut $860,000 from her budget, Sheila Gonzalez changed their minds with a breathtaking lecture.

When a Massachusetts computer manufacturer quoted Ventura County an $800,000 price for some much-needed equipment, the court administrator negotiated the price down to $380,000.

And when a Thousand Oaks firm asked to show off one of its $60,000 video recorders in a local courthouse, she agreed to the deal--as long as the county could keep the equipment afterward.

Gonzalez supporters say those are just a few of the ways she has helped save the budget-strapped county millions of dollars in recent years.

But controversy has surrounded Gonzalez since Feb. 8, when Ventura County judges awarded her a $12,400 pay raise. The 12.85% raise brought Gonzalez’s salary to $109,000 and made her one of highest-paid court administrators in California.

While few people doubt her skills or fault her work for the county, many have criticized the raise, calling it untimely and too large.

“To give one person a major salary increase while you are holding the line on what others are getting sends the wrong message,” said Michael Saliba, the president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. “Our position is irrespective of the quality of the work she has done.”

Barry Hammitt, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Local 998 representing county employees, agreed. “It’s not to say that Sheila doesn’t deserve a pay increase,” Hammitt said. “Nobody says she didn’t do a good job. But in terms of fairness and equity, how do you single out one county employee and say ‘You did a good job’?”

Several judges said there were many reasons for awarding the double-digit raise to Gonzalez, the only county employee whose salary they set.

She had gone nearly four years without a pay increase, they said. She assumed broader responsibilities in that time and was credited with improving the morale of her 296 employees. Without a raise, she might easily be lured to another county, several judges said.

But most of all, they argued, she has saved the courts more money through shrewd bargaining for equipment purchases and streamlining her staff than even the judges thought was possible.

They cited some of the equipment deals she has made as the courts continue to computerize operations.

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Don Mettert, president of Court Vision Communications in Thousand Oaks, said he had been looking for a way to put one of his firm’s newly developed video court reporting systems in a courtroom for display when he began negotiating with Gonzalez.

It was March, 1992, and the trial of the four officers accused of beating Los Angeles motorist Rodney G. King was set to be held in the East County Courthouse in Simi Valley.

Gonzalez entered into an agreement that allowed Court Vision to test its new system and even advertise to other courts that it is being used in Ventura County. In return, Court Vision agreed to let the county keep the system after the officers’ trial. It is now used in Courtroom 23 at the Hall of Justice.

Still, the savings Gonzalez has achieved for the county have not swayed opponents of her pay raise.

Of the 26 judges who voted on the raise, seven were opposed: Superior Court Judges Frederick A. Jones, William L. Peck, James M. McNally, Charles R. McGrath and Ken W. Riley, and Municipal Judges Vincent J. O’Neill and Thomas Hutchins. Superior Court Judges Lawrence Storch and Allan L. Steele abstained, while the rest approved the raise.

Peck said his negative vote “had to do with the timing and the amount and had nothing to do with Sheila and her performance. She has saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars for this county in the programs she and the judges have put into effect.”

But he said the timing of the raise “could not have been worse with the state in such fiscal straits.”

Gonzalez has had to fight hard to persuade county and state budget officials to provide her office with the funds needed to keep the court on the cutting edge of technology.

Municipal Judge Bruce A. Clark, a key supporter of the pay raise, said Gonzalez’s knowledge of computers and how to best use them to serve the public was one of the reasons he pushed to raise her salary.

Clark recalled a meeting on Dec. 17 in which Gonzalez fought with the state Trial Court Budget Commission in Sacramento over a proposal to cut $860,000 from the money it was allocating to Ventura County courts. The money was earmarked for data processing equipment.

Ventura County officials had appealed the decision and mailed documents to the commission supporting their position. But when a Ventura contingent arrived in Sacramento to argue its case, it discovered that those documents had not arrived. So Gonzalez addressed the commission without preparation and delivered what Clark calls an impassioned speech.

“She pointed out that you cannot punish courts that are innovative and on the cutting edge because you would be rewarding mediocrity,” Clark recalled.

“The committee stepped aside and said, based on Sheila’s reputation in technology, ‘We know that this is justified,’ ” Clark recalled. “And I don’t know of any other administrator or court that that would have been done for.”

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Gonzalez is now one of only eight court administrators in California earning more than $100,000 a year, according to public records listing such salaries.

Court administrative salaries range from $169,700 for the head of the 319-judge Los Angeles Unified Courts, to $52,000 for the chief of the one-judge South Sacramento Municipal Court.

In recommending a 12.85% raise for Gonzalez, a group of four local judges studied those salaries and others. Another Superior Court judge, Frederick A. Jones, made a separate study and concluded that such a raise was unjustified, excessive and “will be perceived by the community we serve as extravagant and born of arrogance.”

Jones further noted that the county Board of Supervisor had frozen merit raises for Gonzalez’s employees. He suggested a raise for Gonzalez of no more than 5%, which would have increased her pay to $101,420.

The differing conclusions of Jones and the four other judges illustrate how deciding a court administrator’s pay can be both difficult and inexact.

One factor complicating comparisons with other courts is the fact that the Ventura County court is one of only two in the state with consolidated Municipal and Superior Court administrations.

The other consolidated court is the 48-judge Sacramento County court. The salary of its executive officer is $101,952, or about $8,000 less than Gonzalez’s, even though Sacramento has 21 more judges. In voting against the Gonzalez pay raise, some of the judges felt this analogy was proof she did not deserve the 12.85% raise.

But some judges who favored Gonzalez’s raise noted that the administrator of the 10-judge El Cajon Municipal Court in San Diego earned $97,593, or about $1,000 more than Gonzalez before her raise.

The 28-judge San Francisco County Superior Court offers more of a middle ground for both sides. That court has only one judge more than Ventura County. Its executive officer’s pay is $110,000, or $1,000 more than Gonzalez’s since her raise.

Gonzalez and some of her supporters suggest that opposition to the pay raise might reflect more than budget concerns.

“There’s a lot of people who cannot handle that a woman should get the same amount of money as a man for the same job,” Gonzalez said in an interview. “That has to be part of it.”

Judge Clark made a similar statement. “I wonder to myself whether she’s hitting a glass ceiling based upon gender,” he said.

And so did William Vickrey, director of the statewide Administrative Office of the Courts. “I don’t think the judiciary is exempt from that,” he said.

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Vickrey also said that despite Gonzalez’s high-level responsibilities there appeared to be an impression of her as “an executive secretary.”

“My view is this is a wise expenditure,” Vickrey said of the raise.

Judge Peck said his vote against the raise had nothing to do with sexism.

“That’s absurd,” he said. The other four Superior Court judges who voted against the raise either declined to comment or did not return phone calls. The two Municipal Court judges opposing it could not be reached for comment.

Gonzalez said in addition to savings from the various deals she has negotiated for equipment, the consolidation of the courts that she oversaw has saved the county another $3 million to $4 million over the past four years.

“I’m not telling you that if someone else was sitting in this chair that would not have happened,” Gonzalez said. “But I do know that there were three people in this chair before me, and that didn’t happen.”