City Council reverses plan that could have boosted managers’ pay

The Los Angeles City Council reversed course and voted Friday to nix part of a plan that city officials said could have inadvertently boosted the pay of top city managers.

The council had voted unanimously Wednesday for a salary plan to cover city workers who aren’t unionized. A document prepared for the council suggested that under the plan, dozens of city department heads would get a series of pay increases over the next 15 months.

Council President Herb Wesson said in a statement Wednesday that City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana had unintentionally included general managers in the document, which “was never our intent.” Wesson spokesman Ed Johnson said that if Mayor Eric Garcetti had signed off on the plan, raises would have automatically been granted to every department head.

Santana said earlier this week that the plan was meant to increase the salary range for each department head, not automatically boost their pay. In a Tuesday letter to City Controller Ron Galperin, Santana asked to forfeit any increase in his own salary.

On Friday, council members approved an amended version of the plan for employee salaries, proposed by Councilman Paul Koretz, that “deletes the issue of general managers’ salaries from the overall action,” according to Koretz. The Friday vote was unanimous, with no added discussion of the move.

The apparent mistake and subsequent about-face comes at a sensitive time for the council: The city is negotiating pay with several different employee groups as it stares down a $242-million budget revenue shortfall.

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Twitter: @latimesemily

Emily.Alpert@latimes.com

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.