By John Woolfolk and Diana Samuels
Bay Area News Group
Posted: 08/08/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT
Santa Clara, with just a tenth the population of San Jose, paid its city manager and police chief more than its bigger neighbor last year. So did even smaller Mountain View.
While the $303,451 salary Santa Clara City Manager Jennifer Sparacino received last year may pale next to the bloated purses of officials in Bell -- a town of 40,000 near Los Angeles whose salaries for top officials have sparked national outrage -- the Bell scandal has renewed scrutiny of city salaries everywhere.
For most government agencies, the amounts paid to top officials are just a fraction of their budgets, which is why cost-cutting efforts tend to focus on rank-and-file employees. Still, politicians are especially sensitive about seemingly outsize salaries at a time many taxpayers are struggling with shrinking paychecks.
Santa Clara Councilwoman Jamie McLeod noted that Sparacino has won major professional awards, oversees a city that includes a public utility and recently took a 10 percent pay cut.
"She is, in my book, one of the best, if not the best in the country," McLeod said.
But resident Chris Koltermann, a leading critic of the city's move to subsidize a new football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, was surprised to learn Sparacino and Police Chief Stephen Lodge are paid more than their San Jose counterparts.
"We have a good city staff," said Koltermann. "But private businesses look at what salaries are paid across the board for similar types of jobs, and it would behoove Santa Clara to take a look at that."
Sparacino, in fact, was the top-salaried public official in Santa Clara County in 2009 who's not a doctor at Valley Medical Center.
And though many public officials earned more last year when overtime and other compensation were added in, only three in the nine-county Bay Area drew higher salaries: Nathaniel Ford, chief executive officer of San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency ($332,489); Alameda County Administrator Susan Muranishi ($422,382); and Nancy Farber, CEO of Washington Hospital Healthcare System in Fremont ($596,180).
The Mercury News review of compensation data also found:
# Doctors at Valley Medical Center dominated the list of highest-salaried public employees; 76 VMC doctors earned base pay that's more than $300,000 last year. Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith said the county is about to embark on a comprehensive review of employee compensation. "I would anticipate that there are some employees who are making more than the typical market and some that are lower. We have to address that," he said.
# Four dozen public employees around the Bay Area took home more than $100,000 in overtime. They included six VMC nurses; firefighters in San Jose, Mountain View and Sunnyvale; and eight police officers in crime-plagued Richmond.
# By cashing out some six weeks worth of unused vacation, San Mateo County Counsel Michael Murphy earned $308,045 -- 25 percent more than he earned the year before. That's also 25 percent more than the salary paid his counterpart in Santa Clara County, which is larger by more than 1 million residents.
Murphy said he understands that "as government, we need to spend the people's money wisely. But the other side of that coin is there's an awful lot that we do."
Last week, state Controller John Chiang said he will create an online database of statewide public employee salaries so they are easier to scrutinize. The Bay Area News Group posted its own such database for local governments earlier this year; it can be accessed at www.mercurynews.com/public-employee-salaries.
The controversy over high-level compensation comes as local governments have been laboring to contain pay and benefits for line employees. A recent report from the Santa Clara County Grand Jury blasted local agencies for their generosity, branding the costs "not sustainable."
Among other critiques, grand jurors reported that workers in Saratoga and Palo Alto can take up to 75 paid days off by rolling over unused time from previous years. For firefighters in Santa Clara, the report said, that number is 84 days.
City officials say those numbers are inaccurate or lack context. Saratoga City Manager Dave Anderson noted that his town doesn't differentiate between vacation and sick days and said he would probably not approve a vacation leave of 75 days because it would leave an employee without sick time in case of illness.
As cities have prepared their required responses to the grand jury, many have insisted they are hanging tough.
Mountain View Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga recently said the city should "toot our own horn" about efforts to cap vacation and sick-leave cashouts. Still, the city of 75,000 had some of the county's highest average compensation for employees: Median total compensation for police and firefighters is $190,591, and for other workers it's $123,754.
And when it comes to its top employees, Mountain View doesn't skimp. City Manager Kevin Duggan earned a salary of nearly $280,000 last year, eclipsing San Jose City Manager Debra Figone's salary of almost $265,000.
Police Chief Scott Vermeer earned $287,161. By contrast, San Jose Chief Rob Davis was paid $230,177.
Mountain View Mayor Ronit Bryant said the council reviews the salaries of its appointed city officials each year and is "obviously extremely pleased" with Duggan's performance.
Duggan argued his pay is "very comparable" to his counterparts in neighboring Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, adding that when retirement and other perks are factored in, "they might actually be paid more than I am."
He also noted that Vermeer had gotten a 20 percent raise for assuming the duties of the fire chief for 18 months, which Duggan said saved Mountain View about $200,000. Now that the city has hired a fire chief, Vermeer's pay has dropped to $213,000 -- plus 10 percent for training the new chief.
As for Santa Clara Chief Lodge -- who, unlike Davis and Vermeer, is elected -- Councilman Jamie Matthews said he "is world-class and has brought in grant funding nearly equal to his annual salary to fund our cold-case unit." Lodge received $256,820 last year but is taking a 5 percent cut.
They aren't the only city leaders being asked to justify public employee pay to taxpayers who have fallen on hard times -- especially in the wake of the Bell controversy. Bell's chief administrative officer was paid $788,000, while the police chief took home $457,000 and part-time council members made $100,000.
"Even the best-paid California managers are not in the Bell category," said Michele Frisby, spokeswoman for the International City/County Management Association in Washington, D.C. She said city manager salaries in California tend to be in the $200,000 to $300,000 range.
Most politicians make far less. San Jose's full-time council pay rate is $90,000, less than the nearly $99,000 council salary in San Francisco but more than the $72,000 in Oakland, according to city surveys. The San Jose council this year reduced its pay 10 percent in light of record deficits and requests for similar employee concessions.
Mayor Chuck Reed has declined a 20 percent raise, keeping his salary at $109,000. In San Francisco, which has a "strong mayor" government in which the city's top elected official also serves as chief executive, mayoral pay last year was $251,000.
Elected leaders' pay in smaller cities with part-time councils is much lower. In Santa Clara, Mayor Patricia Mahan was paid about $17,000 last year, while council members made more than $10,000.
Steven Frates, director of research at the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy, said taxpayers shouldn't necessarily expect salaries for top officials to correspond with a city's size.
"Running a small city can be more difficult in some respects," he said.
He and other government watchdogs argue that with the exception of Bell, it's generally the pay and benefits for unionized public workers -- not management -- that are sapping funds for basic services like fire protection, parks and libraries.
"If you really want to pay attention to where the bucks are going," Frates said, "you've got to look at the line employees."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15688525?nclick_check=1
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