Salaries for County Workers
In your editorial, “County Salary Reform: Better Late Than Never” (Dec. 26), you start off by contradicting yourself and the editorial goes downhill from there. On the one hand, you write that slow efforts at salary reform have cost the county plenty; on the other hand, you admit that no performance-based pay hikes have been given to top county officials since 1992.
The average increase for county employees from July 1989 through the end of the fiscal year is less than the increase in either the consumer price index or the employment cost index for the L.A. area. County salaries are actually lagging behind, not skyrocketing.
You focus on the tiny percentage of employees who make large salaries. It might have helped your readers if you had mentioned that most of the county employees making these salaries are doctors. County employees whose salaries have grown the fastest since 1989 are nurses. The county was compelled to increase their salaries significantly to retain quality nurses in a competitive environment.
Some of the high-salaried managers referenced in your editorial actually combine two or more jobs that are performed separately in other jurisdictions. For example, our chief administrative officer combines the functions performed by Los Angeles City’s administrative officer and chief legislative analyst.
You repeat the older slander that Richard Dixon spent $6 million remodeling his office. The remodeling project did not just include his personal office. It extended to 91,000 square feet of space in the Hall of Administration and affected a number of different county departments. The project corrected health and safety violations which had accumulated over a period of 30 years, including earthquake damage repairs.
Much of the project was inaccurately referred to as remodeling by the media. For instance, $700,000 was spent on a new telephone system that was recommended as an economy measure. This will actually save money for the county, which had been leasing its phones at a higher monthly cost. Furthermore, $2.5 million of the project was for a new computer network. As a result of this, the CAO was able to improve productivity while trimming 240 persons from his staff payroll. The one-time outlay of $6 million has resulted in an annual savings of $8 million.
MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH
Chairman of the Board of Supervisors
Los Angeles County