Lesson in How to Refuse a Pay Raise : A look at Yaroslavsky pension flap: It’s best simply to send the money to the general fund

Here’s a little lesson for elected officials, for those times they are considering whether to accept a pay raise. If they want to make a gesture and turn it down, then they should just do that and ship the money to the general fund. Period.

The 15-member Los Angeles City Council faced such a decision last year, and it voted 10 to 2 to not accept the raise as personal salary. It wasn’t a big deal in monetary terms--just $4,534 each. In Los Angeles’ huge budget, that’s not a drop in the bucket; it’s barely a molecule.

However, elected officials never get more mileage out of so little money than when they reject a pay raise. For a few days (and later in their campaign literature) they get to look like fiscal stalwarts, standing fast with every city employee who has been denied a raise. Citizens feel that their elected officials are sharing in hard times. And all that mileage is free.

Such a large return on a small investment ought to suffice, especially for a member who had gotten even more mileage because he was one of the leaders urging colleagues to turn down the raise. “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,” Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky boldly proclaimed. But recently he decided to accept what was left of the raise he had rejected so publicly and to donate it to worthy causes.

He was allowed to change his mind because the council had left some maneuvering room. In the 10-2 vote the council allowed members to choose what to do with the funds rather than simply shift the money to the general fund. That meant that some members could get even more goodwill out of the gesture by taking the raise they turned down and donating it to charity. Two council members did that immediately.

As a leader of the no-raise-this-time movement, however, Yaroslavsky stood to be held to a higher standard if he changed his mind. It comes as no surprise that the biggest issue wasn’t the $1,200 that was left of the raise, or the fact that he planned to donate that small sum. It was the fact that Yaroslavsky, who will soon get an indirect raise by moving to the County Board of Supervisors, was going to get an increase of $500 a year in his city pension because he had changed his mind.

Yaroslavsky called the pension increase “insignificant.” That was an interesting choice of words. And he says he is waiving the extra pension money. Good, but there was a shorter route to this point. Just look over our first paragraph again.