Controversy Widens Over City Salaries : Wages: Huntington Beach councilman asks for information on all city employees’ pay.

The flap over city pay practices continued Thursday as critics assailed newly disclosed employee pay figures, a city councilman called for more details and the finance board chief urged a comprehensive study of city salaries.

Some questioned why, in such an austere era for local governments, 25 Huntington Beach employees earned more than $126,000 in total compensation last year, with several earning $30,000 or more in overtime alone.

Councilman David Sullivan said he plans to ask city administrators for salary information on other city employees.

“I’m very alarmed that the 25th-highest-paid employee is at $126,000, and I want to know how far down the list you have to go before you find an employee who makes under $100,000,” Sullivan said.

The pay seems especially out of line in light of Orange County’s fiscal crisis, some city critics said.

“Here we’re claiming that money’s real tight and we’re going to have to raise taxes. Well, one reason we’re tight is, we’re paying people $140,000,” said Leon McKinney, the city resident who prompted a local weekly’s legal fight for the release of city salary information.

But some City Hall officials said the abundant use of overtime was needed to aid a short-handed public safety staff and save public money.

“It’s cheaper to hire relief personnel through overtime than hiring relief personnel on a permanent basic to provide for coverage when vacancies occur,” said Fire Chief Michael Dolder. “It’s dollars and cents, simple mathematics. . . . There isn’t a less expensive alternative.”

Forced by a court order, the city released a list this week of the 25 highest-paid employees, showing total compensation ranging from $126,348.85 to a high of $174,511.64 for a retiring police captain. Those figures included base salaries, along with car allowances, overtime and employee benefits.

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The list included the city administrator, the police and fire chiefs, the city attorneys, the director of community services, as well fire paramedics, a fire engineer and police lieutenants and captains.

The head of the city’s Finance Board said Thursday that he believes a comprehensive salary study is needed comparing city employees’ pay to that of workers in private industry.

Salaries in many cities became inflated in the 1980s, said Chuck Scheid, chairman of the Finance Board, which assists the City Council in financial matters.

“Cities and counties had lots of money in the 1980s, and they paid their employees very well, and the result was goodness, gracious,” Scheid said. He called the Huntington Beach pay figures high, but said that is true of a number of cities.

“I really think an extremely comprehensive salary study should be made comparing our city to the private sector, and let the chips fall as they may,” Scheid said Thursday.

The finance board has previously discussed whether such a study should be done, but has not met since the top-25 data was released this week.

That list revealed that three fire captain paramedics, two paramedics and a fire engineer each racked up five-digit pay for overtime. The fire engineer, for instance, earned nearly $36,000 in overtime.

Two police lieutenants also received more than $10,000 in overtime pay.

Police Capt. William Mamelli said the Police Department does not want to comment on the overtime issue.

Mamelli, president of the Police Management Assn., is among the city’s 25 top paid employees for 1994, earning $127,335 in total compensation. He said the union opposed releasing salary information with names attached.

“Our salaries as employees are already public information. The thing we consider private is when you put people’s names with exactly how much they earn,” he said. “That delves into people’s privacy.”

At the Fire Department, Dolder said using existing personnel to work overtime to meet daily staffing requirements has been a department practice since the late 1980s.

“An engine has to go out with three people--it’s basic service level,” he said.

Dolder said the department uses overtime to cover shifts to assure acceptable fire response. Firefighters collect overtime when filling in for co-workers who are on vacation or on sick leave, and they also cover for the department’s current 21 firefighter vacancies.

Dolder said firefighters can put in up to 80 hours a week on the job.

“The person who signs up and makes themselves available will undoubtedly make more overtime,” Dolder said. He said he plans to hire 14 paramedics by Oct. 1, which he said will reduce overtime costs.

The salary data was disclosed at a tense time for the city’s police union, the Police Officers’ Assn., which recently requested a 10.75% pay raise for the rank-and-file officers it represents. That request was recently rejected by the city.

Richard Wright, police union president, pointed out that none of its members are included on the “top 25 list” and he renewed his call for better pay.

“We represent at least 85% [of the police force] and they’re the foot soldiers--and those are the folks who are not overpaid and need a raise,” Wright said Thursday. He said he strongly supports the use of overtime pay among police officers.

“I don’t know any other job where people who work nights are required by law to work overtime during the day because they have to obey subpoenas,” he said.

Others remain convinced that some city employees are paid too well.

McKinney, the resident who sparked the fight to make the salary data public, said that he is angered by the amount of money earned by Huntington Beach officials.

“They literally view the public as if our role should be to keep our wallets open and our mouths shut,” said McKinney, who first approached City Hall in May, 1994, to ask for data showing employees’ total compensation.

Lacking funds for a costly legal battle, he took his story to the local weekly, the Huntington Beach/Fountain Valley Independent. The paper sued the city, resulting in a court order that recently declared the information public.

McKinney said he was inspired to seek out the data during the recent controversy over so-called “pension-spiking,” the practice of inflating public salaries during the final year of service to boost pension benefits.

In 1992, state auditors had criticized the spiking practice in Huntington Beach and released the names of 16 retired city officials who they said were collecting pensions based on artificially inflated salaries.

Since then, officials with the California Public Employees Retirement System have set up a new review system to preventing inappropriate spiking by retiring city officials. Only one of the top-paid 25 workers was a retiring employee.