Board Rejects D.A.’s Bid for Prosecutor Pay Raises

Under fire from some of his own staff and running for reelection, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti lost Tuesday in a high-profile fight to win immediate pay raises for nearly 1,000 prosecutors.

Garcetti pleaded with the Board of Supervisors to approve $4 million for pay raises to boost morale, keep overworked attorneys and achieve fairness by bringing prosecutors’ pay into line with lawyers in the county counsel’s office.

Faced with a continuing fiscal crisis, a divided board refused to approve his request, telling him to come back in May after county Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed finishes her proposed 1996-97 budget.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told Garcetti that Reed’s announcement Monday that the county faces a $516-million deficit in the next fiscal year was not good news. “It may be a long time before there are general pay raises in this county,” he said.

Yaroslavsky said it was wrong for the board to consider approving raises for some of the county’s highest-paid employees just weeks before the supervisors must vote on cutting general relief payments for the poorest citizens from $285 to $212 a month.

But Supervisor Gloria Molina pressed for the raises, saying it was inappropriate to link the general relief issue to compensation for prosecutors who handle a flood of tough criminal cases.

No sooner had Garcetti and several of his deputies made their case than representatives from the public defender’s office argued that the salaries of criminal defense lawyers for the indigent should also rise. Historically, their salaries have been equal to their courtroom adversaries from the district attorney’s office.

Molina chided the defense lawyers for stepping up to the table and saying: “Me too. Me too.” She argued that overloaded prosecutors should be paid the same as county counsels, whose job is “not as strenuous and difficult.” Senior deputies in the county counsel’s office earn $104,772 a year compared with the top salary of $96,829 for deputy district attorneys.

For Garcetti, the defeat at the hands of the supervisors comes in the midst of a confidence/no confidence vote on his leadership by his staff.

He also faces a primary election vote March 26, and three of his five challengers are from within his office.

Garcetti provoked anger among his subordinates over a host of salary-related issues, including $43,000 in bonuses given to the three lead attorneys in the O.J. Simpson case. Results on the balloting by attorneys are due Feb. 7, said Herb Lapin, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. After the board action, Lapin said he figured Garcetti would “bear the brunt” of even more anger within the office.

But Lapin said, “It’s time for this critic to give him his due for right now” for having tried to get the raises.

The supervisors did agree to allow Garcetti to promote some attorneys, investigators and clerical staff, a move that will increase costs by almost $2 million a year.

The supervisors did approve a contract to hire health czar Burt Margolin and the law firm he works for, Brady & Berliner, as the county’s new legislative strategists. The cost: $35,000 a month through June.

And in another sign of concern about spending, the board slashed a request from a newly created blue-ribbon task force on the county budget. The panel wanted $250,000 to hire consultants to offer their advice on solving the county’s vexing budget problems. The supervisors reduced it to $100,000.