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BABY BELLS

Unveiling the shocking truth about the exorbitant salaries and benefits received by public employees in California. The article highlights the Bell scandal and other cases of excessive compensation, while also discussing the challenges of transparency in reporting public pay.

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BABY BELLS

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  1. BABY BELLS

  2. Maybe not ‘corruption on steroids,’ but a well-worked system • Roy Campos, Downey police chief • Retired after 30 years of service, age 52 • Total compensation that year: $623,664, including leave worth $401,194. • That made him the second-most-well-compensated city worker in the state of California in 2009, right behind Robert Rizzo, and right in front of Bell’s Angela Spaccia.

  3. When the Bell scandal broke, many official-types asserted that these sorts of startling public payouts were tremendous aberrations. • But it turns out that they’re not so rare. Not at all.

  4. In 2009: • San Francisco’s deputy police chief earned $530,542. • Moreno Valley’s city manager clocked in at $499,937. • And these are just the top-earners for cities …. • Public paychecks can well exceed $2 million a year – some well-justified, perhaps, and some not. • But before we debate the appropriateness of all that, let’s figure out how we got here.

  5. Apples to apples? • Just a few years ago, public pay data was maddeningly difficult to assemble • Apples-to-apples comparisons extremely difficult to do.

  6. Delving into city manager, school superintendent and other executive pay was much like going to war. In OCR’s 2005 salary survey, Bruce Channing of Laguna Hills was OC’s best-paid city manager, at $225,000 a year.

  7. Enter Barbara “Stir-the-Pot” Kogerman, eyeing a run for City Council in Laguna Hills. • How much was the city manager was really, truly making? • How did that compare to other 33 city managers in Orange County? • Prescient; this was just months before the LAT broke the Bell scandal.

  8. In addition to standard salary, benefits, deferred comp and pension contributions that folks usually count…. • Kogerman wanted to know how much was spent on the city manager's: • vehicle purchase/payments, • car insurance, • car repair, • car maintenance, • gasoline, • cell phone equipment and usage, • toll road fees, • in-home computer/office equipment, • dues and subscriptions, • travel and meetings, payouts for unused vacation and sick leave ... • the list went on.

  9. Welcome to hell. • It took Laguna Hills more than 100 hours of staff time to pull the information together, • with an estimated value of $5,000. • Kogerman enlisted the help of Brandman University graduate students in public administration (a separate story you might want to ask Dr. Smoller about).

  10. “It didn't seem they knew where to go for the information,” said intern Amy Wilson. • "Someone, somewhere, needs to come up with a transparency standard for reporting salary and benefits so any citizen can go online and see what they are, rather than being bounced around.”

  11. Stir-the-Pot Kogerman published her findings online in May of 2010 – just weeks before the Los Angeles Times published the first Bell reports. • No. 1: Little Laguna Hills’ Bruce Channing. • She calculated his total comp at $460,809 a year. • City officials attacked her report as “distorted,”“unfair,”“grossly inaccurate and clearly misleading,” and tried to dismiss it as a small-time, small-town electioneering stunt.

  12. Game changer • In July, the LAT broke the Bell scandal. • Officials began stumbling all over one another with proposals to bring accountability and transparency to local government.

  13. The coup de grace came via an order from then-State Controller John Chiang, who simply announced new reporting requirements for all public agencies, "directing them to clearly identify elected officials and public employees' compensation." • The information would be posted on the state controller's website starting in the fall of 2010.

  14. Some battled, but most complied • And publicpay.ca.gov was born

  15. So who makes what? • A surprising number of public employees earned in excess of $1 million in 2013: 32. • Of those 32, six made more than $2 million.

  16. The highest-earning public employee in California in 2013 was not the governor or attorney general or even one of its highly-paid contract physicians. • It was Stephen Todd Alford, coach of UCLA’s basketball team. • Alford had wages of $2.64 million in 2013, and benefits worth another $35,762.

  17. No. 2 was Jeff Tedford, head coach of the California Golden Bears football team at UC Berkeley. Total pay: $2.44 million, no benefits. • Next up was Jim L. Mora, head football coach at UCLA. Total pay: $2.41 million, plus benefits ($41,899).

  18. No. 4: Daniel Dykes, football coach at UC Berkeley. Total pay: $2.37 million, plus benefits ($43,585). • No. 5: Benjamin Clark Howland, basketball coach at UCLA. Total pay: $2.32 million, plus benefits ($15,746). • No. 8: Michael J. Montgomery, basketball coach at UC Berkeley. Total pay: $1.74 million, plus benefits ($27,083). • No. 10 was Dan Guerrero, director of intercollegiate athletics at UCLA (pay, $1.6 million; benefits $63,015).

  19. One could argue that this is justified for reputation- and money-making endeavors such as high-performing university sports teams. • And one could argue that such compensation has no place on the public payroll at all. • UC says no tuition or state dollars pay their salaries. • The Sacramento Bee pointedly noted that these coaches earned twice as much as the most celebrated brain surgeons at UC San Francisco.

  20. The next tier: medical doctors, which may be a bit harder to argue with. • No. 6: Ronald W. Busuttil, executive chairman of the UCLA Department of Surgery (pay, $2.23 million; benefits, $50,812); • No. 7: Gordon A. Cohen, chief of the pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at UCSF (pay, $1.75 million; benefits, $31,851); • No. 9: Timothy H. McCalmont, professor of pathology and dermatology and co-director of UCSF’s dermatopathology service (pay, $1.72 million; benefits, $26,599). • UC is a world-class research university, so while the sums may seem stunning, one can argue that this is simply the price of doing business.

  21. It’s when one dips down the list a bit that things get a bit odder. • Thomas Wander, CEO of the Beta Healthcare Group Risk Management Authority, total compensation of $1.2 million. • Beta is a special district. • It’s “a hospital-controlled risk-sharing pool” founded amid the medical malpractice crisis of the 1970s. • This sort of pay is common among public hospital district CEOs (and nonprofit hospitals, too, but that’s another story).

  22. More obscure folks earning more than the president • Paul Jablonski, CEO of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, racked up total comp of $500,330. • Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, had total compensation of $486,411. • The chancellor of the San Mateo County Community College district had total comp of $419,491 (wages of $373,248 and benefits of $46,243).

  23. More than the governor • Santa Monica Community College District superintendent/president, total comp of $411,783. • General manager of the Eastern Municipal Water District, total comp of $371,736. • Head of the Los Angeles County First 5 program, total comp of $304,128.

  24. Working the system • Overtime can greatly increase pay. • 6,010 city workers earned more in overtime alone than the average per capita income in California ($44,980) in 2013. • The overwhelming majority were firefighters and police officers. • Several firefighters tripled their regular salaries by working gobs of overtime in 2013.

  25. Angel Bobo, a fire captain in Richmond, had regular pay of $113,892 and overtime of $279,105. Total comp, including health and pension benefits: $508,893. • Donn Thompson, City of Los Angeles firefighter III, had regular pay of $109,266, and overtime pay of $242,033. Total comp: $368,805. • Richmond fire captain Marc Palechek, regular pay of $103,160, and overtime pay of $241,578. Total comp: $450,942. • Los Angeles Fire Captain I Charles Ferrari, regular pay of $125,174, and overtime of $240,229. Total comp: $381,877. • Orange County Fire Authority senior communications supervisor David Paschke, regular pay of $76,807, and overtime pay of $141,929. Total comp: $273,195.

  26. Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive secretary, Nancy McFadden, made more than he did, with total comp of $214,046 (to Brown’s $176,142). • Chris Murphy, director of the California Office of Traffic Safety and the Governor's Highway Safety Representative, also eclipsed Brown, with total comp of $193,059. • A deputy secretary manager at the San Diego County fair had total comp of $198,491 (wages of $158,430 and benefits of $40,061).

  27. How did we get to this point? • Having access to this information empowers We the People. • Enables us to have an informed conversation about where we’re spending our money and what precisely we’re buying. • Are our spending priorities in the proper order? Or do we want to change things? • As we debate, we have Robert Rizzo and co. to thank.

  28. Wish list • We hope this is just the infancy of the transparency movement in California and beyond. • How about an easily-accessible database of every contract governments grant to private companies? • And a central spot for accessing official travel and expense reports? • And a central spot for collecting local campaign contributions? • Things are much better than they used to be. But we can dream, can’t we?

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