Supervisors OK Raises for Selves, Keep Travel Perks

Ventura County supervisors voted Tuesday to hike their salaries by more than $3,200 a year and decided to keep their car and gas allowances despite a committee’s recommendation to cut back on the perk.

Each supervisor will now be paid $75,173 a year, officials said.

The pay raise follows a recommendation made by a blue ribbon committee the board established to study the issue after a public outcry over possible salary hikes.

The same committee, though, also recommended that supervisors either take a monthly car allowance of $375 or 31 cents per mile for gas, but not both.

The board delayed action on the vehicle issue until a later date, which supervisors say might be in two months or as long as 10 months.

The lack of action on the car allowance allows supervisors to continue receiving both reimbursements.

“They basically ignored one of the major recommendations of the committee,” said committee member Mike Saliba, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. “I don’t think they were justified in ignoring our other position. The committee recommendations should have been taken as a totality.”

The motion to postpone a vote on the car allowance was made by Supervisor Judy Mikels. Mikels, whose district covers Simi Valley and surrounding communities, said she logs more than 20,000 car miles a year on county business.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said after the vote that the $375 car allowance doesn’t cover his monthly car payment, insurance and repairs.

As the other east county supervisor in Thousand Oaks, Schillo said he deserves reimbursement for the miles he travels to attend meetings in Ventura and for other county business.

“[The options] are not the same thing. One is money to acquire a vehicle, and the other is to be reimbursed for gas,” Schillo said.

Schillo said he expects the board will revisit the matter before the next election in March.

Currently, a supervisor can use a county-leased car at a cost of up to $375 a month or receive the same amount of money to spend on maintaining his or her own vehicle. Supervisors receive the mileage reimbursement in addition to the $375.

The blue ribbon committee made its recommendations after studying the salaries and vehicle compensation plans of other boards of supervisors, members said.

In many other counties of comparable size to Ventura County, supervisors must choose to receive either mileage or a monthly car allowance, Saliba said.

“The committee was trying to be very fair,” he said.

Supervisor John Flynn said the car allowance recommendation by the committee was grossly unfair to the east county supervisors who must travel the farthest.

“They didn’t do their arithmetic. They didn’t take into consideration the inequity of it,” Flynn said.

Flynn dismissed most of the committee’s work, saying that only a few of its members met regularly. He also accused Saliba and committee member Penny Bohannon, from the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., of dictating the panel’s agenda.

Saliba was the only member who voted against any salary increase for board members.

Pay for supervisors will now be 70% of a Superior Court judge’s yearly salary, up from 65%. In the future, supervisors will also get pay increases whenever judges do.

Committee member Mike Montoya, a regional manager for Southern California Edison, said increasing the board’s salary was the fair thing to do.

“They were underpaid relative to the counties we documented a comparison with,” Montoya said.

As for keeping the car allowance, Montoya said, the supervisors had been “pretty generous” to themselves, but he never was led to believe the committee’s recommendations would be strictly adhered to.

“We gave it our best shot, but the ultimate decision was theirs,” Montoya said.

The vote in favor of the salary increase and car and gas allowances was 3 to 1, with Susan Lacey absent. The lone dissenter was Kathy Long, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.