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City workers' pay goes beyond base salary

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Watchdog Report | Digging into San Diego's finances

City workers' pay goes beyond base salary

By Eleanor Yang Su of The San Diego Union Tribune

2:00 a.m. June 29, 2009

Part 1: The city's payroll shot up $41 million last year, even as the mayor confronted a budget shortfall and pledged to rein in spending.

Part 2: Thousands of city employees receive special payouts and unusual benefits that are pushing personnel expenses higher than ever.

Tuesday, June 30: Pay for city employees has grown increasingly top-heavy in the past several years. One out of eight workers took home at least $100,000 last year.

Jaime Fitzpatrick, a police officer who patrols Carmel and Sorrento valleys, received a 47 percent increase in pay last year. It was one of the largest raises among the city's work force.

The increase wasn't triggered by a promotion or a change in duties.

Fitzpatrick received a step increase, education incentive and general salary increase that the police union negotiated. Most of the raise, which boosted her pay to $84,500, was prompted by her completion of two years on patrol and the fact that she had a college degree.

The debate over public-sector compensation typically focuses on general salary increases, which are applied across-the-board to union members.

What's not usually mentioned are special negotiated payouts that are often buried deep inside dense union contracts.

About 55 percent of city of San Diego employees receive some form of extra pay, The San Diego Union-Tribune found in an examination of the city's payroll. Called add-ons, more than 160 types of payouts are given for reasons ranging from rewarding special expertise to helping fill unpopular assignments.

Add-ons helped stretch the city's total compensation last year to $732 million, a 6 percent increase from the year before.

Another expense was money paid to city workers who cashed out benefits, including unused vacation and sick time. That cost the city $5.7 million last year, a 14 percent increase from the previous year.

No city employee would have received a salary increase of 8 percent or more last year, based solely on general increases negotiated by bargaining units. Raises negotiated by the police union boosted pay by 7.3 percent. The annualized fire union raises amounted to 2 percent, and the three other unions had no increase.

Yet, the newspaper analysis found that about one-fifth of city employees received at least an 8 percent pay boost. Counting overtime, the number jumps to one out of four employees.

In plain sight

The payouts are hidden in plain sight, scattered through union contracts under various headings. Premium pay.

Special assignment pay.

New ones are regularly added to union contracts.

Last year, the firefighters union negotiated a raise in "administrative pay" for working a desk job. They now receive a 15 percent increase to base pay, up from 10 percent.

"It's pretty comfortable working in the firehouses. It's difficult to drag them into a Monday-through-Friday schedule, shoving papers and handling phone calls," said Assistant Fire Chief Javier Mainar. "So we have to sweeten the pot."

The police union also was able to increase its add-ons last year by expanding the ranks of officers who receive extra pay for working late-night shifts. The Police Department pays 44 types of add-ons. In total, the department's 2,700 employees collect 4,236 add-on payments. They include extra pay for community relations officers and detectives.

Add-ons are not just for the police and fire departments.

Some examples include:

utbullet.gifLifeguards on the city's scuba-diving team get a 10 percent boost in pay.

utbullet.gifParking enforcement officers who ride three-wheel motorcycles get an add-on of 90 cents an hour.

utbullet.gifCity engineers and architects who have specific certifications or licenses get 5 percent to 15 percent add-ons.

utbullet.gifEmployees who work in confined spaces, such as inside manholes or underground chambers, get an extra 5 percent.

Union leaders say the payouts have been around for decades and are common among public agencies.

Add-ons provide the city with greater flexibility, union officials said, because employees often rotate through shifts and assignments. They also allow the city to motivate, and not force, employees to fill dangerous or less-desirable assignments.

"If someone working SWAT is put in a hostage scenario, he could say, 'I'm not going in,' " said Rob Lewis, a board member for the police union. "The pay is a way to keep motivated people working additional duties."

In some cases, add-ons save the city money, said Frank De Clercq, the head of the city's firefighters union. The city once paid a separate staff to repair ladders, De Clercq said, but now firefighters with special training do the work.

But the add-ons can be expensive, especially because most are percentage-based, and grow with every general salary increase.

"These are negotiated benefits and the city is obligated to pay them," said Mike McDowell, chairman of the board of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. "They should have negotiated better deals along the way."

Mayor Jerry Sanders said he is not a fan of add-ons, and noted that only one has been created since he took office – a firefighter III rank.

"We've really kind of held the line on those, because they make running a place more difficult," Sanders said.

Ways to boost pay

Zero percent salary increase.

That's what the deputy city attorneys union negotiated for its 130 members last fiscal year. Yet, an analysis of what they were paid shows about 50 attorneys took home between 2 percent and 17 percent more last year, with an average of 5 percent.

Most were merit increases, "based on good performance and serving the public interest," said Kathryn Burton, the former assistant city attorney who helped oversee the raises, granted at the discretion of former City Attorney Michael Aguirre.

"They were young kids living on very little money and some of them had children," Burton said. "It was the right thing to do."

Payroll records show the attorneys who received increases were making from $63,000 to $160,000.

Merit increases and add-ons weren't the only ways city employees boosted their pay. Thousands cashed out benefits.

The city paid about $12 million to employees who opted out of health insurance, or did not use their full health care allotment last year. Depending on the terms negotiated by their union, employees receive up to $4,500 a year if they decline health insurance, often because they are covered by a spouse's employer.

One-quarter of employers – public and private – provide this type of benefit, according to a 2007 survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

The city paid $5.7 million to employees who cashed out unused vacation and sick time, referred to as annual leave. That was up from $5 million the previous year.

Dean Roberts, an assistant to the fire chief, cashed out three weeks of vacation last year. Paired with a promotion, his take-home pay jumped 28 percent, to $121,700.

"I guess you can call it a benefit," said Roberts, who estimated he has cashed out vacation five times in his 15 years with the city. "If you put a cap on the annual leave that can be accrued, and then have a workload that makes it impossible to take it, it's a way to offset the time you can't take."

Jeff Jordon, a board member for the police union, said many officers cash out their vacation time to help meet the high costs of living in the region.

The city of San Diego is more generous than others in offering the benefit.

Seventeen percent of employers allow their workers to sell back unused vacation time, according to a national survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. The 2008 report polled about 500 public, private, nonprofit and government agencies.

Scott Chadwick, the city's chief labor negotiator, said the city has tried to reduce payouts and benefits. Chadwick said the city hasn't tried to do away with the vacation cashout because "I wouldn't consider it a perk at all."

Flawed comparisons

While the benefits and add-ons may help the city retain talented employees, they also make it difficult to compare pay with other agencies.

Police union officials have long contended that San Diego pays its officers much less than other Southern California agencies. They have conducted studies, which they say show their total compensation is at least 11 percent less than other agencies. They say after the pay cuts go into effect July 1, their compensation will be 17 percent to 30 percent behind others. Union officials declined to provide copies of their reports.

Police pay levels were blamed for severe shortages in 2006. The shortages prompted salary increases and were used to justify the education incentives that now benefit about 1,600 police personnel.

The city commissioned its own report in 2008, which found several officer ranks taking home less pay than counterparts in other cities. But the city report only considered a limited view of compensation, including base salary, and employee contributions to health care and pensions. The only add-on factored in was education incentive pay.

"They have so many extra premiums that you can't just look at an hourly rate," said Michael Kolb, director of the National Public Employer Labor Relations Association. "You have to look at what the premiums are, how many holidays they get, how their overtime is paid. You have to look at the total package."

Staff writer Craig Gustafson contributed to this report.

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Jaime Fitzpatrick, a police officer who patrols Carmel and Sorrento valleys, received a 47 percent increase in pay last year. It was one of the largest raises among the city's work force.

The increase wasn't triggered by a promotion or a change in duties.

Fitzpatrick received a step increase, education incentive and general salary increase that the police union negotiated. Most of the raise, which boosted her pay to $84,500, was prompted by her completion of two years on patrol and the fact that she had a college degree.

So she went from being severely underpaid to being paid decently (For a normal job). I fail to see any issue here. Hell, I wouldn't be a cop for 80k, that's not enough money for me to risk my life on a daily basis and put myself in harm's way. She also has a college degree. I figure Jamie is a 100k candidate with the degree (possibly in criminal justice) and being an officer of the law.

I didn't read the rest of the article.

*EDIT*

Ok I read the entire thing, and I really don't see the issue with most of it. Pay increase for working in confided spaces, OK by me, the rest of it seems fairly normal with an exception or two.

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anybody care to summarize for me?

Surprise, people get paid more when they hold special qualifications or more education. The end.

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Hey...let's all go work for the City of San Diego!

Again, just to clarify, NOT all public agencies have such high pay. My agency hasn't provided ANY cost of living adjustments in over 5 years. At that time, they did a 5% COLA...and it was another 5 years previous with no COLA to that one. Thus, my agency has provided "one" "5% increase" since 1999 (ten years).

In addition, most of the folks working in my division earn less than $40,000...and NO there are no "other income" sources to this.

Try to qualify for a home loan or even makes ends meet in SOCAL on $40,000 per year!

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Hey...let's all go work for the City of San Diego!

Good idea. http://www.sandiego.gov/police/recruiting/faq/benefits.shtml $3800 a month to start. Subtract taxes (500), union dues (100), retirement (500), out of pocket medical if you have a family (150)....so $2550 take home....

Shock has a point...not all add ons are listed. Not all the deductions are either...look at the whole picture. For SDPD, we negotiated those add ons in lieu of an across the board percentage raise (cuz the city wouldn't give us one). It saved the city a ton of money to break everything out. Oh, they took back their deal on the retirement percentage paid by them.

During my time there. Educational Incentive: 7% w/bachelors degree (must also re-qual w/additional classes the 1st 7 yrs) 5% Detective (this is a civil service protected position/promotion) 3% SWAT, 3% Hostage Negotiation Team-later change to Emergency NT. Night differential (Night Vice - 5PM to 3AM)

At any one time. 7% + 3% + 5% =15% over base pay. Of course you get overtime if you work it.....just like everywhere else.

Cashing in....yup...up to 125 hours of vacation/comp time per year. The city would rather have you take the time, but when there are minimum staffing levels and limits on what you can accrue, use it or lose it (cash or time off).

As we know, the media can slant their story however they want it to read. They can make it sound a lot worse than it is. Strega makes a great point...after four years of working rotating days & shifts dealing with what a cop (or jail deputy) does, you wanna make $85K, please sign up. Be aware, you'll top out in about 8 years and only get COLA raises after that (or not in this economy). Be prepared to have take aways forced on you outside of your contract like the city just did...again.

I have NO complaints overall...just think the city should have kept their end of the contract.

The military has flight pay, hazardous duty pay, etc & better re-enlistment bonuses for those specialties in critical need. AS THEY SHOULD!

It's kinda like a lawyer. Pass the bar, be a lawyer. Specialize in a field that commands more money, charge it. Get your LLM in Taxation, charge even more.

Prosecute or defend criminals...work for the city/county/state/fed & get a pension & a guarantee of a non-stop "client" base.

Again....which is worse....giving gov't employees the pay & benefits they earn through a contract negotiated with their employer....or FREE money, medical care, housing for those who don't work.....oh, or low percentage student loans.

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Jaime Fitzpatrick, a police officer who patrols Carmel and Sorrento valleys, received a 47 percent increase in pay last year. It was one of the largest raises among the city's work force.

The increase wasn't triggered by a promotion or a change in duties.

Fitzpatrick received a step increase, education incentive and general salary increase that the police union negotiated. Most of the raise, which boosted her pay to $84,500, was prompted by her completion of two years on patrol and the fact that she had a college degree.

So she went from being severely underpaid to being paid decently (For a normal job). I fail to see any issue here. Hell, I wouldn't be a cop for 80k, that's not enough money for me to risk my life on a daily basis and put myself in harm's way. She also has a college degree. I figure Jamie is a 100k candidate with the degree (possibly in criminal justice) and being an officer of the law.

I didn't read the rest of the article.

*EDIT*

Ok I read the entire thing, and I really don't see the issue with most of it. Pay increase for working in confided spaces, OK by me, the rest of it seems fairly normal with an exception or two.

In case any of you are interested in a comparison. My job, from most opinions, has me consistantly in harms way. I have a college degree, and many years of time in specialized career training. A cost and time commitment which is similar to what many doctors and lawyers will spend. Responsibility for my job includes the $8 million aircraft and direct safety of up to 9 people. In October I will complete two years of service with my company and at that time I will be about about $20,000 dollars away from equaling her current salary.

My thoughts on COLA. Two types on this, first is annual salary increases to comensate for inflation. My employers base pay scale is 4 years old. Not since I was in the Navy did I get an annual pay raise based on inflation. The other is for geographic differences and providing extra money to pay for the cost of housing and milk. My employer selects what cities they want to allow crewmembers to live in based on their logistic needs. Cost of living within the crew domiciles ranges from San Francisco, CA, NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta to Kansas City, Omaha, Indianapolis, Little Rock. If logistic needs require more pilots in a certain domicile they will hire into that city. OR current employees may be asked to move there. At no time are we offered or given a cost of living adjustment in our base salary for living in a city like San Diego. Not that I needed one to give me incentive to live here, but assignments are made and unless your employment is contractual or reassignment forced upon you (military) I don't believe an allowance should be given. Take it or leave it, your employment here is voluntary. Retirement program, try 25% matching on 3%.

I agree with Shock, Government jobs are money. If I could get one I'd take it in a minute. Job security, better pay, incentives out the ass, retirement.... It's too bad the taxpayer has to foot the bill on this. The last FAA flying job I saw posted had similar experience requirements as mine but starting pay was double and the benefits were triple.

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I agree with Shock, Government jobs are money. If I could get one I'd take it in a minute.

Apply at SDPD or SDSO....do your street time (about 5 years) then go to the Air Unit. Get chopper certified on their dime, fly fixed wing too, get flight pay. I agree with both of you....the pay and benefits are good. I don't mind my taxes going for emergency services and some of the necessary admin stuff, just over $100 Million for an inauguration party gets me miffed.

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I read that story in the paper and one of the issues that I was concerned about was that ratio of +$100K employees that the city has seems way high. Most City employee positions are rank and file and don't make big money (like RangerDan mentioned). I get the impression that the higher pay is in the Management, Professional, Police and Fire classifications. If managers are making lots of money they better be running a really sharp operation, or they should be canned. If police officers are making loads of overtime then the department is short of staff or badly run, management should be canned. I think that the fire dept is way overpaid (my opinion) because they get hundreds of highly qualified applicants for every opening. What is with the premium for working a desk 9-5 Mon-Fri? One of the biggest points the fire fighters make in negotiations is that they have to work rotating shifts and don't get to keep regular hours like everyone else. Another case study of bad management in action. If everyone above Capt got canned, would the level of fire service be any different?

The biggest offenders are the pack of clowns in the offices of the City Council, the Mayor, and the city owned corporations like CCDC etc. The staff expenses and salaries are political payola and a source of insider and sweetheart deals.

I'm not kidding when I advocate dis-incorporating the City and eliminating all but the most basic government services! For crying out loud, did you see the story about the 11 city water cops! MORONIC!!!

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did you see the story about the 11 city water cops! MORONIC!!!

I had a friend in college whose summer job was Lawncop. He was to police the city of Detroit and issue citations to those folks who didn't cut their grass. The new water laws are going to brown a lot of lawns and people won't abide by them in order to preserve their pretty green grass. I think the watercops could "earn" their pay in citations easily. I know most of the houses in my neighborhood haven't complied.

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I had a friend in college whose summer job was Lawncop. He was to police the city of Detroit and issue citations to those folks who didn't cut their grass. The new water laws are going to brown a lot of lawns and people won't abide by them in order to preserve their pretty green grass. I think the watercops could "earn" their pay in citations easily. I know most of the houses in my neighborhood haven't complied.

There's your new job!!!

Airborne water cop!!! :lol:

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The reference to the water cops is to point out the mentality of the city management. My house was built in 1954 as part of the Clairemont subdivision which had to provide additions and improvements to the City water system to ensure adequate supplies. In the years since then the city has grown and grown, yet the long term water needs have not been considered as new developments have been added. If you read the articles and press releases about the water situation, you will see that the current "drought crisis" is a bunch of empty talk to divert attention from the real problem (crappy and crooked city government).

The City could make tons of money by paying the police department on commission for traffic violations, contracting outstanding warrants to bounty hunters and selling crack out of the parking enforcement trikes! Why stop with writing tickets for watering my lawn with water that I PAY for!

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I rarely complain about civil salaries or paid political positions. Mostly, these folks are underpaid, which is why we have such a poor quality of employee.

I believe governmental employees, if we must have them, should be paid well enough to attract excellent candidates. The UT 's article reminded me of a comic book with graphics for children about what one could buy with the money if we didn't pay employees as much. What a crock. That could be done with anyone's job.

And, coming from a self-employed perspective where job stability does not exist, a job has it's advantages.

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Cops and firefighters 100+k? due to rotating shifts. Rotating shifts deduct 8 years from your life. There should be a premium pay :lol: . Oh yeah and you can get shot at :lol: Lets point our fingers at Highly compensated executives or Wall Street Brokers. City Govt, Cops and Firefighters are too easy a target.

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hey i know lets outsource all these jobs too and see how much money we could save. Life would be great, imagine getting pulled over by someone who doesn't even speak english, or the firefighter who got lost on the way to your accident cause he cannot read the street signs.................

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Here's why I don't get too excited about what the UT prints. This is from CityBeat, a great alternative paper edited by my buddy David Rolland and can be accessed directly here http://bit.ly/kUhz5

Union-Tribune cuts toughest criticisms from mayor’s letter to the editor

June 30, 2009 - 3:15 pm — Eric Wolff

Mayor Jerry Sanders has come out of his corner with fists flying in his brawl with the San Diego Union-Tribune. The paper concluded a three-part series today in which they argue that the city has been growing its payroll during a period of fiscal belt-tightening. In his response, Sanders sent a memo to the City Council going through the story line by line to correct the record, and he sent a letter to the Union-Tribune, which the paper published in today’s edition.

But the paper didn’t publish the letter in full. According to an e-mail sent to CityBeat by Sanders’ spokesperson Rachel Laing, the paper cut off the first and last paragraphs of the letter. While it’s common for newspapers, including CityBeat, to edit letters down for space, letters from high-profile individuals arguing controversial stories are often left untouched. In this case, the paragraphs the paper opted to cut happened to contain the harshest criticisms of the story. Laing also provided CityBeat with the complete letter.

“Over several months,” the first paragraph read, “the Union-Tribune was provided thousands of pages of data by my office, and yet still managed to produce an article that was highly distorted, and in some cases, downright false.”

The letter went on to detail flaws in the story’s logic about the purported rise in payroll.

The final paragraph, which was also cut, read: “This information is part of the public record and was explained in detail to the Union-Tribune. Unfortunately, the newspaper’s Watchdog Team needed a sensational claim to justify its months-long ‘analysis,’ so it distorted some facts and excluded others with the clear intent of misleading the public.”

I left a message this afternoon for Union-Tribune’s opinion editor Bernie Jones to get comment.

The complete text of the letter, with the missing paragraphs restored, is after the jump:

Over several months, the Union-Tribune was provided thousands of pages of data by my office, and yet still managed to produce an article that was highly distorted, and in some cases, downright false.

So allow me to set the record straight.

First, City payroll has gone down since I became mayor. This is a fact and it is irrefutable. When we finish the 2009 fiscal year Wednesday, overall payroll will have dropped by approximately $7 million between my first year in office and this year.

Instead of reporting on this encouraging trend, the Union-Tribune chose to cherry-pick a single year in which payroll did, in fact, rise — though it was the result of an abnormal convergence of events, a fact surprisingly left unexplained in the article.

The so-called $41 million “increase” in payroll, which followed three years of negative payroll growth, breaks down like this:

$22.5 million was the result of pay raises, the bulk of which went to public-safety personnel to stop the exodus of police officers and firefighters who were leaving for higher salaries offered by other cities. When combined with modest raises granted by the previous administration to general employees — who had gone two years without any pay increases – overall city salaries rose 3.6 percent.

$11 million was spent to repay city employees who either agreed to have their pay reduced or made extra pension contributions – the proceeds of which were to be leveraged for the benefit of the retirement system. When the former city attorney blocked the city from using their money for this purpose, it was rightfully returned to those employees. An additional $1 million is attributable to other one-time expenses.

Lastly, $6.5 million was due to increased overtime, $5 million of which went to firefighters. The article omits that nearly two-thirds of that amount — $4 million – was paid to firefighters who responded to an unusually high number of fires and hurricanes outside San Diego. This amount is initially paid by the city, but fully reimbursed by the state and federal governments.

All in all, nearly half of the $41 million “increase” was due to one-time aberrations: employees getting repaid what they were owed and firefighting costs for which the city is fully reimbursed.

This information is part of the public record and was explained in detail to the Union-Tribune. Unfortunately, the newspaper’s Watchdog Team needed a sensational claim to justify its months-long “analysis,” so it distorted some facts and excluded others with the clear intent of misleading the public.

JERRY SANDERS

Mayor, City of San Diego

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Exactly. I have given taped interviews to the media only to read completely different facts the next day. Amazing...but unfortunately not uncommon.

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