Supervisors Slash Assessor’s Post-Election Pay by 29%

How’s this for a job description:

Real estate appraiser needed. Must be prepared to deal with thousands of angry property owners, fight to retain position every four years--and accept a $45,000 pay cut.

Those are the qualifications for Los Angeles County’s next assessor as of Tuesday, when the Board of Supervisors voted to slash the position’s pay by 29% after the November election in which voters will select a replacement for retiring Assessor Kenneth P. Hahn.

Don’t shed any tears for the office’s next occupant, though. The post will still pay $141,000 and command a $100-million budget, the biggest such office in California. That keeps Los Angeles County’s assessor as the highest paid in the state. Orange County’s assessor, by contrast, makes $100,000 annually. San Diego County’s earns $129,000.

The pay cut comes three months after supervisors approved what is believed to be the largest pay increase in Los Angeles history for the district attorney, whose salary will rise by $51,000 after the November election.

Supervisors and county officials justified the pay raise by noting that it brought the salary of the county’s top prosecutor in line with that of the assessor.

Now the assessor’s salary is being knocked down, under a law that allows supervisors to change the pay of elected offices before the elections for those positions.

“The current salary was too high,” county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said. “It’s just putting it back in line” with that of other assessors statewide.

The roots of the assessor’s unusually high salary date back to the 1980s, when a Republican board majority supported Assessor John Lynch and Sheriff Sherman Block but not the Democratic district attorney, Ira Reiner.

Supervisors regularly boosted the pay of the assessor and sheriff--so much so that the latter position is now the highest-paid elected post in the nation. Lynch was replaced by Hahn in 1990, but the assessor’s salary continued to rise. Last year Hahn’s salary reached its apex at $193,000, dwarfing the district attorney’s $133,500, not to mention the pay of the secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department ($151,800).

Supervisors lowered the assessor’s pay by $9,000 before the November election last year, leaving him at $185,378. Hahn announced his retirement earlier this month, effective in January, because of his own and his mother’s ill health. The board is expected to select his interim replacement in January and then call a special election in November.

The names of possible contenders include the official Hahn wants to succeed him, Assistant Assessor Rick Auerbach; City Controller Rick Tuttle, who has reached the term limit for his current office; and John Lynch, the assessor Hahn unseated in his bitter 1990 victory.