Highly Paid L.A. Council Gets a Raise

The Los Angeles City Council, already the highest paid council in the nation, will get pay increases totaling 5% over two years, officials said Friday.

Some council members said they were uncomfortable with receiving a pay raise when a hiring freeze has been imposed on city staff and officials are struggling with a potential budget deficit. Their pay will grow from $133,051 a year to $139,784 by July 1, 2003.

“I asked, ‘How do we get a pay raise when we have a budget crisis?’” Councilman Dennis Zine said.

The answer: Voters approved a measure in 1990 that took salary decisions out of the hands of elected officials and tied the salaries to the pay of local judges. The city’s 15 council members get the same salary as Superior Court judges. The controller receives 10% more, while the city attorney receives an additional 20%. The mayor earns 30% more than the jurists.

Since that measure passed 12 years ago, council salaries have more than doubled.

The latest pay boost, triggered when the state approved raises for the judges, will increase the salary for Mayor James K. Hahn from $172,966 to $181,719 by July 2003.

By that same date, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Controller Laura Chick will also receive 5% raises, boosting their salaries to $167,740 and $153,762, respectively.

Starting this week and retroactive to September, council members’ salaries were bumped up about 2.5% to $136,224, and the mayor’s pay was set at $177,091.

Julie Wong, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said Hahn will accept the raise, but declined to comment further. The salary increase will bring him within the range of pay for New York City’s mayor, which is $195,000 a year. However, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, is accepting only $1 a year.

The size of city officials’ salaries and the way they are set drew criticism from taxpayer advocates, including Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

“They are way out of line with what is the norm nationally,” Coupal said.

When it comes to council members’ salaries, no city comes close.

New York City’s 51 council members receive an annual salary of $90,000.

Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, pays $85,000 to its 50 alder members, and Philadelphia pays most of its 17 council members $80,000, although the council president gets $100,000.

Coupal argued there is no accountability in automatically tying council members’ salaries to judges’ pay.

“It’s clearly not based on performance,” he said. “It’s based on other peoples’ performance and needs.

“There is a complete taxpayer disconnect in this process.”

The provision tying salaries to judges’ pay was part of Proposition H, an ethics-reform package that also banned council members from receiving honoraria and outside earned income. Council members were responsible for including the pay formula in the measure. Some reformers thought it was their attempt to sour voters on the proposition by providing for huge pay increases. At the time, council members were paid $61,222 a year.

Julie Butcher, general manager of Service Employees International Union Local 347, the largest city employees union, said that although Proposition H has boosted salaries, it has been worthwhile for the reforms it brought to City Hall.

None of the council members had notified the controller by Friday that they would not be accepting the raise.

“The voters of this city decided over a decade ago that they wanted to avoid the political spectacle and the political grandstanding that goes along with this type of issue,” said Councilman Jack Weiss. “I don’t have any intent to disrupt what the voters decided. It’s a matter of the operation of law.”

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said that the council has approved pay raises for all other city employees despite the budget problems. Members of Butcher’s union received 4% more last July, will get 2% this July, and an additional 2% in July 2003.

Miscikowski, who is married to multimillionaire developer Doug Ring, said she will accept the pay increase because she, too, does not want to make a big deal of the issue.

“I’m accepting it only because there are other members of the council who really need it,” Miscikowski said. Councilman Eric Garcetti said he does not want to grandstand by turning down the increase.

“These are the biggest council districts in the country,” Garcetti said. “And maybe we can work out in the future a mechanism where [our salaries] are not pegged to the judges’ salaries, but we are not voting on that now. I donate probably 20% of my salary to charity as it is. I feel fine.”

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Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.