Pay Increases Raise Questions

Despite the extensive publicity about instant Internet millionaires, most Orange County residents realize that a $20,000 annual pay raise is quite nice indeed.

Last month the county sheriff, district attorney, public defender and county counsel got boosts of nearly that much, putting their pay at $156,166 per year. The five supervisors unanimously gave themselves $5,600 increases as well, putting them at $97,822 a year.

Supervisor Chuck Smith said the raises were needed to attract and keep good people. That may be true at lower levels in the county bureaucracy, where investigators, nurses and social workers toil. But when it comes to elected office, including supervisor, candidates don’t get in it for the money. A desire for public service or ego gratification are good motivators. And given the supervisors’ sorry record of recent years, they certainly don’t deserve the raises.

The supervisors this year proclaimed themselves willing to hold officials responsible for meeting goals and for possibly losing funding increases if the goals are not met. They should do that for salaries as well.

Supervisor Jim Silva said it was important that taxpayers know what they are getting for their money. That’s true. To do that, why not bring back the citizen committees formed after the 1994 bankruptcy and have them review expenditures and provide input on goals and how well they are met.

The raises given out this time will cost an additional $4.5 million a year. That’s not much in a $4.5-billion county budget, but some of the individual hikes are hefty. In addition, supervisors made the county’s 101 executive managers eligible for additional raises beyond those just given. Those managers certainly should not get raises again this year. Private companies seldom increase pay more than once a year.

It has been nearly six years since the county declared bankruptcy following disastrous bets on the direction of interest rates. None of the current supervisors were in office then.

But the board still uses the $1 billion in debt incurred to get out of bankruptcy as an excuse for some of its funding decisions. Next year its public budget hearings should include evaluations of the various county departments to see how well they have done in meeting the targets in their newly formulated business plans.