Panel Agrees to Reexamine State Officials’ Raises

The state board that recently provoked public ire by approving 26% to 34% pay raises for the governor, legislators and other top state officials agreed Friday to take another look at the increases and possibly repeal or change them.

However, board member Andrew Hopwood of Long Beach, who emerged as the apparent swing vote on the seven-member Citizens Compensation Commission, said he favors reopening the issue but still believes the raises were justified.

“I haven’t changed my opinion,” Hopwood told The Times. “The salary was appropriate for the jobs they do.”

Commission Chairman Claude Brinegar, who voted against the increases March 26 at a brief, sparsely attended session in Burlingame, announced that the panel will hold a special hearing April 30 in Sacramento to receive, after the fact, public testimony on the issue.

Commission members, appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson, then will examine “possible” reconsideration, revision or repeal of the pay raises, which are to take effect Dec. 7.

The raises touched off a statewide outcry, especially from state employees who have not had a pay raise under Wilson in three years.

Reopening the issue to public testimony will enable the panel “to consider whether another action would better serve the public interest,” Brinegar, a retired oil executive, said.

Commissioner Johnny Zamrzla, a Lancaster roofing contractor who had favored even higher pay raises, said he saw no need for the special meeting.

“After you vote, there’s a winner and loser,” Zamrzla said.

In its surprise move, the commission granted the governor a pay raise to $165,000 a year, up from $131,000, an action that would keep California’s chief executive the best-paid governor in the country.

The panel also boosted the pay of legislators from $78,624 to $99,000 yearly. In addition, all other elected state officials, from lieutenant governor to insurance commissioner, received raises ranging from 25% to 34%.

Proponents of the raises argued that the extra pay was commensurate with the responsibilities of officeholders in the world’s seventh-largest economy and merely brought state officials more in line with compensation paid to major city and county officials.

Brinegar said last month that he doubted that the board, which approved the raises by a 4-3 vote, would agree to undo its action. He said the four members who favored the hikes knew they would cause controversy but cast “pretty determined” votes anyway.

The commission could repeal the increases, adjust them up or down, agree to a simple cost-of-living adjustment, or let them take effect as scheduled.

Commissioner Robert Larkin of Simi Valley, who had called for more public exposure when the commission voted last month, said that at least the issues will be fully aired at the special meeting.

“If we meet again, and we get the public input and the vote is the same, I can live with it,” Larkin said Friday. “What I have a hard time living with is a 10-minute meeting [March 26] that costs the taxpayers $5 million in salaries a year.”

Hopwood, chairman of the Los Angeles County Republican Central Committee, surfaced immediately as the potential swing vote.

Hopwood said that if people believe the pay raises were granted in an “‘underhanded” or “unpublicized” way, “perhaps it should be fixed and we’re fixing it.”

Hopwood said Brinegar told him that a new public meeting was needed because of a barrage of telephone calls, angry letters and lobbying by the Paul Gann Citizens Committee, an influential taxpayers organization.

The commission was created in 1990 when voters enacted Proposition 112. A major part of the measure established the commission as an independent entity with the power to establish legislative and executive branch salaries.

In exchange, lawmakers surrendered their authority to set salaries, including their own.