To Police Unions, Silver Is Gold

For Southland cops, Santa Monica attorney Stephen Silver is the guy who shows them the money.

When cities say they can’t afford another pay raise, Silver steps in with a fistful of legal briefs and a cool negotiating style that closes the deal.

Silver, 62, may be the region’s preeminent lawyer when it comes to law enforcement pay and benefits. He has represented dozens of public-safety unions in Southern California, from Ventura to San Diego.

“He’s the best; he’s basically made new law,” said Ventura County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston, who fought off Silver’s advances on behalf of deputy sheriffs two years ago. “He’s made himself a major player.”

Along the way, Silver has helped to elevate the compensation and benefits packages of law enforcement to new heights that have become the envy of other public employees and a quandary for financially squeezed local governments.

While police once routinely worked five days a week and fought for every cost-of-living increase, many now enjoy automatic pay hikes, three-day work weeks, premium health benefits and retirement at 50 with full pay.

For three decades, Silver has been their orator, weathering countless contract battles -- once even getting thrown in jail by the mayor of Pomona for refusing to shut up. And his influence has been felt beyond the negotiating table.

Wielding legal petitions like battering rams, he rewrote state law to make sure officers statewide got fatter pensions. Another legal victory entitles officers facing charges and other defendants to challenge the competency of their lawyers.

What sets Silver apart from other union lawyers, said attorney David G. Miller, is his professionalism in reaching an agreement. Miller’s Long Beach firm represents several cities and he has often sat on the opposite side of the table from Silver.

“Steve is in some ways a more old-fashioned lawyer in terms of valuing civility, although we have to yell and scream a little once in a while,” Miller said.

Silver knows it might seem strange for a self-described ‘60s liberal to be a spokesman for the police. But he said most officers are “Joe Blows” who need a helping hand to win fair wages.

“My background is so different from most law enforcement officers,” said Silver, whose father was a Los Angeles lawyer. “But the cops are the most loyal and appreciative group of people I have met.”

Tall and lean, Silver keeps fit by skipping lunches and playing pick-up basketball at a church near his Brentwood home. He’s such a sports fanatic that in his Santa Monica office, his basketball trophies get better display space than his law degree.

Wife Susan, a partner at their law firm, said her husband puts his own ego aside to find the best deal for his clients.

“He prides himself on going up against the large law firms,” she said.

Daughter Elizabeth Tourgeman, 34, is one of the firm’s nine associate attorneys. But son Michael, 38, chose another profession, writing for Sports Illustrated.

Silver wasn’t looking to specialize in labor law when he graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law in 1965. He kicked around the Bay Area for a few years, wearing a three-piece suit to his law firm job by day and watching rock concerts at night.

But Los Angeles was his home, and in 1970 he moved back, getting work in a small Santa Monica practice. Public employee compensation was opening up as a new area of law because the Legislature had just passed a law requiring government employers to bargain in good faith with their workers, Silver said.

City and county administrators, used to calling the shots, weren’t happy to see him, he remembers.

“They were very anti-labor to begin with, and all of a sudden the unions were showing up with the long-haired attorney telling them how to run their cities,” he said.

The job proved a good fit for his liberal leanings, Silver said.

Police officers in the early 1970s got by on no-frills pay and benefits. When he met with city leaders, Silver’s message was always the same: Police are vital to a community’s well-being and should be first in line for pay raises.

Today, a police officer in Southern California averages $60,000 in base salary alone. Overtime can add tens of thousands more.

“It’s a dangerous and difficult job,” Silver said. “In a split second they could be either dead or a murderer, depending on whether they pulled the trigger.”

The high regard for Silver among law enforcement officers was cemented by an incident early in his career.

Angry that the Pomona City Council was about to pass a paltry pay raise, Silver refused to leave the speaker’s podium, talking nonstop for 18 minutes.

The mayor ordered the union president to arrest him, but the off-duty officer refused. Five other police officers present also declined, forcing the mayor to make a citizen’s arrest himself, Silver said.

“The first phone call I got, at 4:40 in the morning, was from the president of a fraternal order of police in Rhode Island,” he said. “They had heard about the arrest and wanted to say they appreciated what I did.”

The district attorney’s office refused to prosecute, he said, so the city hired a local attorney to act as a special prosecutor. Silver eventually was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of disrupting the council meeting.

News about the standoff brought a flood of new clients. Silver started his own practice and estimated he has represented more than 100 police and firefighters’ unions.

Silver, Hadden & Silver also helps police facing disciplinary actions and those filing suits alleging harassment or discrimination. Lawyers in the firm represented two of the Riverside police officers involved in the 1998 police shooting death of 19-year-old Tyisha Miller.

Police unions’ power has ebbed and flowed over the years, depending on the economy and who’s in power at the local governing board, Silver said.

“I tell them, ‘You will be better off putting your money in politics than hiring me,’ ” he said.

He once represented an Orange County police agency in a city where the unions helped elect a council majority. During negotiations, the union president would call the mayor every time the city made an offer the president didn’t like.

“Within an hour, a better offer was being made,” Silver said.

But cities can also play hardball, he said.

Years ago, a Redondo Beach police union was holding a private meeting at a city library when one of the officers noticed that video cameras mounted on the walls were moving, he said. Officers opened a door and out came the assistant city manager along with two department heads, he said.

“Their excuse was that they were checking the video equipment,” Silver said. “There was a whole bunch of litigation over that one.”

In the past decade, Silver has become well-known as the author of a legal brief that sweetened the pensions of law enforcement officers.

Silver argued to the state Supreme Court that non-salary items, such as unused vacation time and extra pay for marksmanship, should be added to an officer’s final year’s salary. Because final salary is the basis for computing pensions, the ruling bumped pensions by 10% to 15%, he said.

That ruling, combined with expanded pension benefits allowed by the Legislature in recent years, means that police in some jurisdictions qualify for retirement income greater than their salaries.

“That decision overturned 15 years of appellate court precedent,” said Tourgeman, Silver’s daughter.

Silver said he now turns down most of the pension-related work that comes his way, finding it too dull. He spends most of his time negotiating contracts. But even that has lost some of its luster.

Silver said he has noticed a generational change among police officers, who are making more money and have “more toys to play with.”

“The camaraderie has really disappeared,” he said. “There was the tremendous amount of closeness, an us-against-them mentality when I was starting out. Now I have one union president say his three days a week is his “jail sentence” so he can go home and play for the remaining days of the week.”