Wilson Agrees to Grant 7% Raises to CHP Officers

Pete Wilson, in one of his final acts as governor, agreed Friday to grant a 7% pay raise to California’s roughly 5,000 Highway Patrol officers.

The one-year package grants the officers a 5% raise retroactive to July 1 and an additional 2% on Nov. 1, at a cost of about $26 million. The Legislature must ratify the contract. Approval is likely.

“They put their lives on the line each day and are entitled to an increase in their pay,” said Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh. “It’s a good deal for the Highway Patrol officer, and a good deal for the taxpayers.”

The deal still leaves the bulk of the state’s 200,000-member work force, from clerks to attorneys, without a pay package. Word of the pay raise is sure to fuel more anger among the bulk of state workers, who have gone without a raise since January 1995.

“Absolutely incredible and typical of the administration,” said one state union official whose bargaining group has been shut out. “Another nasty parting shot to the rest of us, to the majority of state workers.”

The money for the raise comes from one of the state’s special funds and probably will not affect the state’s looming general fund budget shortfall, predicted to be about $1 billion.

At the same time, however, a judge in Sacramento issued an order Friday that could complicate Gov.-elect Gray Davis’ effort to craft a new budget.

Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly ordered that the state repay $162 million to the highway fund. The Wilson administration used the highway money for general purposes during the recession earlier in the 1990s.

“At a time when there is a looming deficit, there’s another interesting twist,” said Bruce Blanning of the union that represents state engineers, which sued the administration over the transfer. “It has been the practice of the Wilson administration to use money improperly and the courts have caught him again.”

The Highway Patrol officers’ package increases the top wage to $4,105 a month, or just more than $49,000 a year, from the old maximum of $3,834 monthly. To help pay for the raise, recruits will see their pay drop by about 5% to $2,600 a month, said Dave Gilb, of the Department of Personnel Administration.

CHP veterans will be able to retire at 85% of their top salaries, up from 80%. The union also agreed to some of Wilson’s requests for work changes, including a two-year probationary period for new officers, rather than the previous one year.

Earlier this year, Wilson gave the state prison guards’ union a raise that boosts veterans’ pay to $51,000 a year.