Overtime Had Big Effect on Top City Salaries : Public policy: As five more municipalities release figures, Irvine city manager heads list at $223,000. Extra shifts especially boost pay of police, fire officials.

The highest-paid employees in five Orange County cities earned from $69,000 to $223,000 in the past year, with some police officials collecting more than $38,000 in overtime pay alone, according to figures released Friday.

Officials in Cypress, Irvine, Newport Beach, Placentia and San Clemente released salary information for their 25 highest-paid employees, about two weeks after a court ordered Huntington Beach to make its employee pay public. The figures include annual salary and benefits such as insurance and pensions.

The highest-paid employee in the five other cities was Irvine City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr., who received $222,992.31 in total compensation, including a onetime “vacation buyout” of about $39,000 last year.

Of the cities, Irvine paid its employees the best, with the top 25 workers earning more than $130,000 each.

In Irvine, 19 of the top-paid employees worked for the Police Department. Eight of them made more than $20,000 each in overtime.

In three of the cities, public safety employees also were well-represented among those municipal workers making the most money.

* In Newport Beach, 12 police employees and seven firefighters made the top-25 list, earning $112,000 to $152,000 each. The best-paid employee was City Manager Kevin J. Murphy, who earned $154,000 in salary and other benefits.

* In Cypress, 19 police employees were on the list, earning $81,000 to $123,000. City Manager Darrell Essex, who has served the city for 33 years, earned the top compensation of $149,001 in salary and benefits.

* In Placentia, 19 police employees were among the best paid, ranging from $86,000 to $119,000. The top-paid city employee was Police Chief Manuel Ortega, who earned $119,000.

* In San Clemente, the highest-paid employee was City Manager Michael W. Parness, who earned $132,000. San Clemente does not have its own fire or police departments and contracts with the county for police and fire service.

Elected city leaders had mixed reactions Friday to the pay figures, with most saying it was not surprising that police and fire employees earned top pay considering they are required to work long and unpredictable hours.

“Cops get paid some overtime--they have to because you can’t just stop a shift if an emergency happens,” said Cypress Councilman Tom Carroll. “Some overtime does not bother me in the least. In the budget, the total overtime budget is not excessive.”

But a few council members said they were troubled by the high pay earned by some employees and said their cities should try to compensate employees in a manner that better reflects the private sector.

“During the last three or four years, the private sector has been downsizing and freezing salaries, so families have had to cut back,” said Irvine Councilwoman Christina L. Shea. “It makes it difficult for me as a public servant to support increases in pay when private sector pay is going down.”

The five cities agreed to release the pay figures for 1994 after Huntington Beach officials were forced by court order to reveal the salaries of the city’s highest-paid employees, who each earned $126,000 to $174,000 in salary and benefits. A judge ordered the city to release the information after the Huntington Beach/Fountain Valley Independent, a local newspaper, sued the city to obtain access to salary information.

Most other cities in the county have indicated they will release similar salary figures over the next few weeks.

In Irvine, the city manager and two other Irvine employees bolstered their pay significantly with one-time “vacation buyouts,” prompted by a recent city decision to place a cap on the amount of vacation an employee can bank, said Assistant City Manager Allison Hart.

The new cap is aimed at reducing city costs, but the payouts alter the compensation totals for the 1994-95 budget year, Hart said.

“You’ve got this sort of skewed effect,” she said.

Brady received a one-time vacation buyout of $39,256, while Executive Assistant Lawrence H. Larsen received a $40,344 buyout, bringing his total compensation to $155,566.21. The third buyout, for $34,364.18, went to I. E. Paikoff, manager in the office of management and budget, whose compensation totaled $144,091.84.

Reaction to Brady’s total compensation by Irvine City Council members was mixed. Shea said she thought the pay might be excessive. But Councilman Barry J. Hammond noted that the buyout made Brady’s total “a little misleading,” adding that some chief executives in private companies receive much more compensation.

Overtime pay totaling $38,688.12 helped make Irvine Police Sgt. Brian Clifton the city’s second-highest-paid employee. He earned $157,000.

Lt. Patrick Rodgers, past president of the Irvine Police Assn., said the sergeant and other officers earned so much in overtime pay because they helped coordinate police service at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater events.

“The vast majority” of overtime paid to several officers on the lists was the result of work at the amphitheater, which is paid for through a surcharge on amphitheater ticket sales, Rodgers said.

Rodgers also said the department had been operating with seven unfilled officer positions. “We’ve had to pay a lot of overtime in the last year because we were understaffed,” Rodgers said. “Just about the time we get [the positions] filled, some other people leave.”

In Newport Beach, the second-highest-paid employee was City Atty. Robert Burnham, who earned $154,086 in salary and compensation.

Newport Beach City Councilwoman Jean H. Watt said the council has been discussing pay issues for several years.

“It’s not something that just came up,” Watt said. “We certainly are talking about it all the time and generating new policies.”

In Newport Beach, the “Top 25” list included two payments of more than $36,000 apiece to a deputy fire chief and a fire captain. Both payments were classified as “other pay.”

The bulk of those payments were one-time payouts of accumulated vacation time and leave time made at the employees’ request, the city manager said.

Before the 1990s, employees were allowed to bank significant amounts of vacation time, Murphy said. The two employees received such large payouts because they are longtime employees who had banked large amounts of time.

The city has changed its policy and no longer allows employees to bank more than three years’ worth of vacation and leave time, Murphy said.

As for the law enforcement salaries, Murphy said it is difficult to compare police work with the private sector.

“It’s been harder and harder to recruit and train quality law enforcement officers,” he said. “There’s a smaller supply and high demand. Consequently, wages of law enforcement has grown faster than other fields.”

In San Clemente, the best-paid 25 employees earned from $69,000 to more than $130,000. Five employees made more than $100,000.

Cypress paid 25 of its employees more than $81,000 each last year.

“I don’t think we are out of line,” said Cypress Mayor Cecilia Age. “We have worked really hard. City employees did not get raises for three years . . . and it was awful. We were very stringent.”

In Placentia, the top-25 top-paid employees earned $80,101 to $119,924.

Two Placentia City Council members, Carol Downey and John O. Tynes, said Friday night that they could not comment on the top-25 list until they had a chance to review the figures.

Times Correspondents Alan Eyerly and Hope Hamashige contributed to this report.