Yaroslavsky Pledges to Forgo Pension Increase : Finances: Councilman says he will waive about $500 in annual benefits resulting from acceptance of a pay hike he rejected last year.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, seeking to regain the high moral ground in an era of City Hall austerity, pledged Thursday to give up the additional pension benefits he would have obtained from his recent, quiet decision to accept a 5% pay hike that he very publicly rejected last year.

“To ensure that I will receive absolutely no benefit from this action, I have asked the city attorney to draft documents which I will sign waiving the pension increase,” Yaroslavsky, who represents the southeastern part of the San Fernando Valley, said in a news release.

By reversing his earlier refusal to accept the salary hike, Yaroslavsky stood to earn about $500 a year in additional retirement benefits, a “financially insignificant” amount, the councilman said in his press statement.

Even so, Yaroslavsky added: “I refuse to let even this small benefit cloud the impact of my decision. . . . I pride myself on consistency and on asking of myself the same sacrifice that I ask of others.”

The Times reported Thursday that Yaroslavsky on July 22 had rescinded his prior decision to pass up a 5% pay hike that council members were entitled to receive beginning Jan. 1, 1994.

In November, 1993, the prospect of that pay hike for City Hall’s elected officials prompted Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick to unveil a plan--enthusiastically endorsed by Yaroslavsky, the council’s budget committee chairman--calling on council members to voluntarily reject the pay hike to set an example of sacrifice for other municipal workers.

At the time, the city was facing a budget crisis so severe that pay increases for city workers were in doubt.

Thirteen of the council’s 15 members eventually took the no-pay-hike pledge. “I cannot imagine that (council members) would take a pay increase at a time when we are asking our own employees to make a sacrifice,” Yaroslavsky said last November when he backed Chick’s plan.

While campaigning for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this spring, Yaroslavsky criticized the board as fiscally irresponsible, citing in particular a secret decision by top county officials to increase the pensions of thousands of county employees. The biggest pension bonanzas went to the supervisors themselves and senior bureaucrats.

Tim Lynch, spokesman for City Controller Rick Tuttle, said Yaroslavsky is the only one of the 13 to withdraw the pay hike refusal.

The 5% council pay hike, if taken, would have boosted council member pay from $90,680 to $95,214 per year, a $4,534 increase.

But because he will be stepping down from his council job in early December to take his seat on the Board of Supervisors, Yaroslavsky will be getting the pay hike for only about a quarter of a year--and that means a salary hike of only $1,200.

However, that raise would have increased by $500 per year the total amount of pension benefits payable to Yaroslavsky, now 46, when he is eligible at 55 to receive retirement pay from the city. As a retiree with 19 1/2 years of city service, Yaroslavsky will be entitled to a pension of more than $37,000 a year.

When The Times first learned of his decision to take the money, Yaroslavsky’s chief deputy, Alisa Katz, said he did not intend to personally pocket the additional salary. She said that he was going to donate it to four worthy programs in his district, but acknowledged that he would also get a pension boost from it.

On Thursday, after The Times published a story about his pay hike decision, Yaroslavsky announced that he had decided also to forgo the increased pension benefits.

In his news release Thursday, Yaroslavsky played down the amount of money involved in the controversy, noting that the actual amount of his raise came to a 1.25% increase for the year, less than the 2% annual increase the city has offered civilian employees.

Yaroslavsky is currently in Berlin speaking to a conference about integration of ethnic minorities in urban areas sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The councilman intends to divide his pay raise equally among a project to build a new library in Studio City, the Sherman Oaks senior citizens center, the Beverly-Fairfax Patrol and the Westwood Farmers’ Market, Katz said. Yaroslavsky, according to Katz, still has not determined if he will donate before- or after-tax proceeds.