L.A. Officials’ Raises Likely Despite Stalled Reviews

Ten of Los Angeles’ highest-paid city employees will probably receive raises of 4% to 21%, even though their performance reviews are mired in bureaucratic delays.

The raises range from $4,614 to $19,210 and would make Bill McCarley, a former mayoral chief of staff who now heads the Department of Water and Power, the top earner on the city payroll, collecting $190,000 a year. Airport Director Jack Driscoll would rank third among city employees--behind City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie--with a salary of $175,000. The council is expected to give final approval next week.

When Mayor Richard Riordan suggested the raises last month, several council members balked at the notion of upping salaries before reviewing the general managers’ performances. The review process has been bogged down for months as administrators argue over how department heads should set their goals.

But in hearings on each employee’s proposed raise, council members approved the increases individually, saying they seemed to address historic inequities within departments or respond to competitive salaries for similar posts in other government agencies.

Lawmakers remain concerned about the slow pace of the merit pay plan, an initiative Riordan fought hard to put in place early in his term that has yet to result in the formal adoption of any goals or recommendations for salary changes based on performance.

“I don’t think anybody was happy with this because people wanted the merit pay plan to happen first,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who heads the Personnel Committee, said after the discussion behind closed doors. “But nobody wanted to hold this group of people hostage because [Riordan] held off on his own merit pay plan so long. . . . Who knows whether they’ll ever get a merit pay increase at the rate this is going.”

Riordan, who pledged during his campaign to run City Hall more like a business, established a new merit pay system for top officials about two years ago, setting up individual committees to review each manager’s goals and evaluate performance. In a March memo, the mayor asked these committees to approve goals for fiscal years 1995-96 and 1996-97 no later than April 19. To date, some have yet to meet. None of the goals have been approved by the council, as is required.

Steve Sugerman, Riordan’s assistant chief of staff, said the process got hung up by disagreements within the bureaucracy over how to handle general citywide goals on items such as affirmative action. The goals should be forwarded to the council for approval within the next two months.

“We share the council’s frustration over the delays,” Sugerman said. “Given that this was a first-of-its-kind program, it was important to make sure all the I’s were dotted and Ts were crossed.”

Besides McCarley and Driscoll, the raises given preliminary approval Tuesday are for:

* Parker Anderson, Community Development, a 10% increase to $117,346

* Del Biagi, Sanitation, a 6.3% raise to $143,028

* Jurutha Brown, Parks and Recreation, up 3.8% to $123,881

* Pat Howard, Street Maintenance, a 9.9% increase to $124,800

* Pension planners Gary Mattingly and Oscar Peters, whose raises will bring their salaries to $110,998 (up 13.4%) and $108,597 (up 21%), respectively

* Al Nodal, Cultural Affairs, a 10.5% jump to $93,313

* Robert Yates, Transportation, an 11% boost to $138,559