The bucks stop at City Hall

Re “Elected officials differ on 4% pay hike,” Nov. 16

The controversy over L.A. elected officials’ pay raises and city tax hikes should be treated as separate issues. The money for a few people’s raises will not go very far toward balancing the city’s budget when spread across the fiscal needs for the whole city.

Proposition 13, the property tax measure, was supposed to cut waste in government spending. Yet it didn’t prevent these raises from occurring. Turning down new taxes will not stop these raises either; it will only cut the budget for our police and fire stations, street paving, parks, libraries and animal shelters.

I’m sure the elected officials who refused the raise would argue that more tax revenue is needed for city government to do its job adequately. I’m certain that my co-worker who lost her son in a drive-by shooting would agree, especially on money for the police.

Dominick Falzone

Los Angeles

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Comparing the actual dollar salaries of the Los Angeles City Council and the New York City Council makes for a snappy headline. But it makes more sense to compare them on a price-per-resident basis, although even doing that reaches the same conclusion:

New York City has 51 council members, paid at least $90,000 each, for a total cost to New Yorkers of at least $4.59 million.

Los Angeles has 15 council members, paid $178,000 each, for a total cost to our residents of $2.67 million.

Each New York City Council member represents about 160,000 people.

In L.A., each council seat represents about 253,000 people.

This means that New Yorkers pay 55 cents per resident for their council’s service, and Los Angeles pays 70 cents per resident. So, yes, on that basis, it appears that Los Angeles is paying more.

Robert Helfman

Los Angeles

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The Times states that the measure passed by the voters in 1990 implementing the way the city elected officials’ pay is set was linked to Superior Court judges’ pay. In fact, the measure linked the pay to that of the lower-paid Municipal Court judges (and City Council members’ pay would match that of a Municipal Court judge). Some years later, the municipal and superior courts were combined, and there was no more pay scale for Municipal Court judges.

With that, the city attorney opined that the pay thus would be linked to that of Superior Court judges -- a dubious opinion that gave a significant raise to all. That is how it has been since because no one has challenged it -- and frankly, it should be challenged and voters should cut the link to judicial pay.

Kevin FitzMaurice

Los Angeles