Unanimous Board Backs Big Raises for Top Executives

With only one lone public dissenter, Orange County supervisors approved sweeping pay raises Tuesday for as many as 4,200 employees, including hefty increases of up to 19% for nearly two dozen top elected and appointed officials.

The new pay levels received unanimous approval from the five supervisors, who will get a modest $5,600 jump in salary, to $97,822 a year.

The raises will cost an additional $4.5 million a year. The amount was included within the county’s $4.5-billion budget for 2000-01, which also was approved Tuesday.

Board Chairman Chuck Smith said the increases are necessary to attract and keep good people in government. He proposed that a special panel be formed to further review the salaries of the county’s 12 elected officials, including supervisors--an indication he believes their pay still may be too low.

Four county executives will get the biggest boosts, to $156,166 a year: Sheriff Mike Carona, Public Defender Carl Holmes, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and County Counsel Laurence M. Watson. Their salaries will jump by nearly $20,000 annually.

Hiking other employee salaries--including specialized employees such as defense investigators, public health nurses, social workers and forensic assistants--is critical to keep pay competitive and in line with other large counties, Smith said.

“These recommendations go a long way toward correcting our place in the market,” he said.

The lone critic of the salary spikes was Fullerton anti-tax activist Bruce Whitaker, who served on a government review panel in the wake of the county’s December 1994 bankruptcy. He urged supervisors to reject the recommendation by County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier for “market adjustments” of up to 15% for top employees, with another 3.25% to 4% salary boost for most others.

Whitaker said most taxpayers don’t share the supervisors’ rosy assessment of government performance. In justifying the increases, county staff compared Orange County to counties that don’t have a chief executive, he said. Additionally, the county still carries $1 billion in bankruptcy debt.

“A year or two without an historic bankruptcy, embezzlement and criminal indictments may be noteworthy, but it doesn’t necessarily constitute stellar accomplishment,” he said.

Of the county’s $4.5-billion budget, only about 10% is at the discretion of supervisors, Whitaker added. That means the bulk of the budget is on “autopilot, [which] doesn’t require a high level of leadership.”

As part of the salary action, supervisors made the county’s 101 executive managers eligible for raises that could take their maximum compensation from the current ceiling of $160,000 a year to $191,401.

Mittermeier, the highest-paid executive manager, earns $160,000 a year, though her salary wasn’t included in the raises approved Tuesday.

Most of the increases take effect June 30. Supervisors should start taking home more pay July 27, after final approval of their new salary next week.

In other financial matters Tuesday, supervisors pledged to consider funding a $1.4-million substance abuse treatment program for jail inmates at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange, after a personal appeal from Carona.

The money wasn’t included in the budget, and was to come from the county’s share of tobacco-litigation settlement proceeds. However, supervisors froze spending any of the money, in light of an initiative headed for the November ballot that would force the board to give 80% of roughly $35 million a year to health care programs, with the rest going to law enforcement.

Carona told supervisors he’d be willing to use his department’s share of the tobacco money for the 64-bed pilot program. The facility will save money in the long run, he said, by reducing by up to 60% the number of new crimes committed by substance-abusing inmates after their release.

Supervisors also approved changes to the county’s investment policy, allowing Treasurer-Tax Collector John M.W. Moorlach to achieve higher yields on some of the money he invests for the county government and school districts.

The new policy gives Moorlach discretion to invest some money for up to three years, instead of the current 13-month cutoff. The county has a conservative financial policy because of the risky investments that resulted in the loss of $1.7 billion in 1994 that led to the bankruptcy.

County Chief Financial Officer Gary Burton called the proposal “a good move” that will allow greater yield without jeopardizing public funds.