City Council Members Receive More Money, More Flak

Los Angeles City Council members were under fire this week over another round of pay raises--one that will hike their annual salaries to $113,376.

A voter-approved ethics measure automatically triggered a 2.5% pay raise for Los Angeles City Council members effective July 1. That means their salaries have climbed 85% since Proposition H was approved in 1990, when council members earned $61,222.

The raises are drawing flak from taxpayer groups and others who note the City Council was already the highest paid council in the country.

“They are grossly overpaid,” said Gordon Murley, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.

The ballot measure linked council salaries with the pay for Municipal Court judges, who just received a 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment on July 1.

Murley said the voters were tricked into voting for the pay formula by city officials who buried it in a package of ethics reforms.

Deputy Controller Tim Lynch said the only elected official to decline part of the raise was Councilwoman Laura Chick of Tarzana, who has always only accepted the amount that other city employees get, which was a 2% raise on July 1.

“She doesn’t feel that as a council member she should get anything more than what other city employees get,” said Kristin Vellandi, a spokeswoman for Chick.

But Councilman Hal Bernson has no apologies for accepting the full raise.

“The voters tied the salaries to the judges’,” Ali Sar, a spokesman for Bernson, explained. “He always has said as long as the council does not control the raises, he would support it.”

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AGE-OLD DEBATE: On the job for less than a month, 26-year-old City Councilman Alex Padilla of Pacoima has already had his youth raised as an issue by a colleague.

The issue arose in council debate as Padilla argued in favor of creating an Office of Neighborhoods. Padilla had argued in favor of the proposal, but was challenged by Bernson, 68.

“You are new and you are young and you don’t understand,” Bernson told Padilla. “You haven’t had the experience we’ve had with these kinds of things.”

Padilla shot back that he understood perfectly well.

“The voters approved the creation of neighborhood councils to be overseen by the Office of Neighborhoods, not by this City Council,” Padilla said.

In the end, youth prevailed over age--or at least Padilla’s position carried over Bernson’s objections.

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FIZZLE, NOT FIRE: Many observers predicted fireworks Wednesday when the Local Agency Formation Commission debated whether to scrap a subcommittee on San Fernando Valley secession.

But the panel wound up in the trash heap of history with barely a bang of controversy or name-calling.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a LAFCO member who served as chair of the subcommittee, “went ballistic” last month, to use his own phrase, when LAFCO chairman Thomas Jackson sent him a letter saying he was unilaterally disbanding it.

Along with Valley VOTE, the group pushing for a study and possible vote on secession, Yaroslavsky questioned the motives behind the move, wondering whether the secession process was being manipulated behind closed doors. He also asked County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman to weigh in on whether the “firing-by-mail” incident, as it was dubbed, was legal.

It was not, Pellman opined in a missive of his own, and so the issue was placed on LAFCO’s agenda Wednesday for formal consideration.

“I was personally offended by the way I received that notice,” Yaroslavsky told Jackson on Wednesday.

The end result was just as rude for Yaroslavsky, however.

As it turned out, most of LAFCO’s nine members, including Bernson of Northridge, agreed with Jackson. They thought the committee, which hashed out many of the procedural issues regarding a secession study, had outlived its usefulness.

Yaroslavsky asked commissioners whether he was the problem, and even volunteered to step down if it meant saving the committee, but his arguments did not change any minds. When it came time to vote, Yaroslavsky, sensing the obvious, asked the board to avoid that formality.

Despite the support from his colleagues, Jackson admitted he had been insensitive.

“I apologize to the members who were so-called ‘fired-by-mail,’ ” Jackson told his colleagues. “It was probably an inappropriate thing for me to do. I just felt that there were public hearings and other things occurring that the other members were not privy to.”

Valley VOTE had initially taken sides in the dispute, and argued Wednesday to save the committee. But after the battle was lost, group President Jeff Brain put a positive spin on the decision, noting that LAFCO decided to meet twice a month instead of once as usual to ensure the secession process received adequate public scrutiny.

“We’re pleased that they came up with an alternative,” Brian said.

Secession leaders were rebuffed by LAFCO on Wednesday after submitting documents that proposed Valley VOTE and Los Angeles, the two opposing parties in the secession dispute, be included in LAFCO’s process of selecting expert consultants to help with the secession study.

Supervisor and LAFCO member Yvonne Brathwaite-Burke said the only people deciding LAFCO’s consultants should be LAFCO--a position quickly seconded by her colleagues.

“The city should have their consultants, they [Valley VOTE] should have their consultants, and we should have ours,” Burke said. “Neither Valley VOTE, nor the city of Los Angeles, should have any input on who our consultant should be.”

Afterward, Brain said Valley VOTE’s intent had been misinterpreted by LAFCO. The group only wanted to make sure the decision was made openly, and secession boosters could comment on the consultants before they were chosen, he said.

LAFCO said Valley VOTE will have a chance to comment--during public hearings just like everyone else in the city.