City’s Employees Fare Too Well at Taxpayer Expense

* The editorial “Measuring Government Performance,” Sept. 3, was right on the mark. I applaud the Times Mirror corporation and the Huntington Beach Independent newspaper for defending the public’s right to know. Since the day I was elected to the Huntington Beach City Council, I have been struggling to get employee salary and benefit information. The next question that I want answered is: How far down the list of our 1,100 employees do we have to go to find the first employee who makes less than $75,000? The editorial is correct when it states that the city (i.e., the city attorney) has stonewalled on releasing salary information.

A valid salary [and] benefit study must be undertaken comparing city and private sector compensation. Years ago municipal employees were paid less than the private sector and were therefore given generous benefits to compensate for the pay inequity. Of course, they have always had near total job security.

Today the picture has greatly changed. U.S. Department of Labor statistics indicate that public sector compensation now greatly exceeds the private sector for most employees below top management, especially when benefits are considered. However, it appears that some top management employees in Huntington Beach are reimbursed for overtime, unlike those in the private sector.

Preliminary reviews by myself and others indicate that Huntington Beach employee wages are as much as 20% higher than the private sector and even other levels of government in some cases. I have described the city benefit package as a Rolls-Royce. [For instance] a class A “pick your own physician” medical insurance plan for which the employee makes no contribution; a supplemental retirement benefit that, when the state retirement system requires the employee to take a reduced retirement benefit in order to allow the survivor to continue to receive the benefit, restores the full benefit to the retiree at taxpayers’ expense.

Currently Huntington Beach employees are paid more than the private sector, have a Rolls-Royce benefit package and have almost total job security, courtesy of the taxpayers of Huntington Beach. And let’s not forget the estimated $15-million unfunded liability caused by salary spiking. Wages and benefit costs are strangling the Huntington Beach taxpayers. I have labored long and hard to expose this system and will continue to do so.

DAVE SULLIVAN

Mayor Pro Tem

Huntington Beach