by Jack Lee
E-R’s David Little recently wrote an excellent editorial detailing the wage discrepancy between identical job titles in municipal agencies. The arbitrary way the State, Counties and Cities assign salaries is a problem for taxpayers and it’s led to rediculous disparity in some salaries. The temptation for bureaucrat’s to inflate their own salaries has led to serious problems, if not outright looting, as we saw in Bell, Ca.
Well, I have an idea! Let’s get legislation passed that would bring some credible structure and more uniformity to administrative salaries.
I envision a three tier system that would break down salaries into categories of elected officials, merit system employees and professional employees. We start with the highest paid elected official, the Governor and all other elected positions are prorated based upon the population they serve. The next is the merit employee. The highest pay goes to the person who supervises the most employees and has the greatest responsibility. Next is the professional employee. This would include doctors, lawyers, architects and other positions requiring 6 years of college or more. Each top position in this category is established based on job responsibilities, employees supervised and lastly with respect to private sector salaries, less 20%. Each subordinate rung on the pay scale ladder is based off the highest salary within their particular sector. A fair parity between the top paid and lowest paid is already in place, so we only have to deal with modifying the highest paid department heads and all other salaries will fall in line accordingly, we simply keep the old average parity spread because that part is good and it doesn’t need fixing.
If a uniform government salary guide were adopted by the California League of Cities we could then propose legislation mandating those salary structures. My estimates predict an annual savings of about $25 billion dollars from the current $146 billion dollar budget for 2013.
This savings of $25 billion more money to hire more people, but it would also mean the top-paid city officials in the state would take a big hit. For example, the city manager of Buena Park, who earned $545,394 last year, see that one fall by 40%! The fire chief in Milpitas would likely see his $461,212 salary cut by about 55%. City wages for Chico would also fall considerably too. We’re currently 44th highest for the [average] salary within the entire State. We’re paying an average wage of $67.645 per employee and that’s higher than larger or more expensive cities such as Napa, Newport Beach, Oceanside, San Diego, Sausalito and Santa Barbara, as noted in Little’s editorial.
This wide parity spread doesn’t make any sense, does it? No, and my simple reform idea would absolutely fix this erratic salary spread, but here’s the big problem: Getting it passed our State legislature to become law would be almost impossible.
Corrupt politics favors the status quo, not reform.
would like to see a constitutional amendment to require ALL salary increases to elected officials be voted on by John/Jane Q Taxpayer.
I think that is more than reasonable J. Maybe our current Assemblyman could introduce such a bill?
Oops – and add perks to that vote!
Jack the structure you propose reminds me of military structure. If it works in the military it might work for state and local government workers as well. One problem I see is that it costs a lot more to live in some areas than others so the model would have to be adapted for each municipality.
One things for sure, we haven’t been able to trust the current powers to keep their pay consistent with either the market that drives general pay scales in the private sector or the service model that trades a little less in compensation in exchange for the job security. And the higher the position, the worse the abuse.
The private sector and the public sector are not the same and public sector powers have been trying to pretend they are. People like Bill Gates generated the wealth he enjoys. The president of a state sponsored school earned his position but still depends on the taxpayer for his compensation. He doesn’t get to try to replicate the life of Bill Gates at the expense of the tax payer.
Good points Tina. I think a local cost of living adjustment once every 6 mos would fix this part.