City manager contracts feature one-up clauses
Benchmarking to peers could mean raises trigger raises
By Jeff McDonald, UNION-TRIBUNE
Monday, August 16, 2010 at 9:36 p.m.
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Back to Watchdog index Poway City Manager Penny Riley’s contract spells out that she will not dip below the top one-third of her counterparts across San Diego County in total compensation. Out of 18 city managers, the contract specifies, that means she will never fall below No. 6.
Beginning Jan. 1, Carlsbad City Manager Lisa Hildabrand is guaranteed to be paid no less than $100 below the second-earning city manager in San Diego County.
The contract provisions, benchmarks that could cost taxpayers more and more as city administrators one-up each other’s pay, are the latest findings in The Watchdog’s ongoing examination of public-sector salaries.
“City managers are like baseball managers; the smallest thing that goes wrong, they’re going to be held accountable,” said Robert Stock, a professor of public administration at San Diego State University. “I’m not saying, ‘Pay them all a lot of money,’ but this is why they are compensated that way.”
This month, The Watchdog requested contracts and salary information for top executives from all 18 cities and San Diego County.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/16/city-manager-contracts-feature-one-clauses/
Dems propose a tax swap
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By Kevin Yamamura
kyamamura@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
Last Modified: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010 - 6:51 am
Legislative Democrats released a budget plan Tuesday that avoids major cuts to schools and social services while relying on a complex tax swap whose implications for taxpayers are in dispute.
Nearly five weeks into the fiscal year, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, framed their joint budget plan as a new way to end the Capitol stalemate over how to bridge a $19 billion deficit.
The most controversial new mechanism would impose an income tax increase of one percentage point for 2010 on all but the highest bracket as well as a tax hike of half a percentage point on vehicles. Those increases would be coupled with a decrease in the state sales tax rate of 1.75 cents on the dollar through next June. Another sales tax decrease would take place next July.
Democrats say the plan would raise roughly $1.8 billion through next June. Though that's only one-tenth the size of the deficit, Democrats consider any revenue idea that could gain GOP support a significant piece of the puzzle.
Steinberg and Pérez insisted that the proposal would lower, not raise, tax burdens for Californians by virtue of the sales tax cut and federal deductibility of taxes on income and vehicles. That argument will need to stick if Democrats are going to persuade Republicans to provide votes for a budget plan.
"We've hit as close to a sweet spot as you will ever find," Steinberg said. "More revenue for the state, more money from Washington, D.C., a net tax cut for Californians across income sectors. I challenge the governor and the Republicans to come up with a tax reform proposal that meets all three of those criteria."
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/04/2935014/budget-tax-swap.html#ixzz0veqEms91
THE DEMOCRATS' NEW BUDGET PLAN
Legislative Democrats unveiled a new plan Tuesday to close the state's $19.1 billion budget deficit. It rejects the governor's proposed cuts to welfare, child care, in-home care and schools, assumes a rosier economic forecast and includes a controversial tax plan. Here are some of the elements of the tax plan:
• Establishes an extraction tax on oil producers.
• Delays implementation of three business tax breaks.
• Lowers the sales tax rate by 1.75 cents on the dollar through June 30, 2011.
• Increases the rate on all but the highest income tax bracket by one percentage point starting with the 2010 tax year.
• Increases the vehicle license fee by 0.5 percentage points.
• Democrats argue that taxpayers who itemize federal income taxes will recoup some of the increases in income and vehicle taxes through deductions. The rest, they say, will be offset by the lower sales tax. The governor disagrees, saying the changes will result in a net tax increase for middle-class taxpayers.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/04/2935014/budget-tax-swap.html#ixzz0veqMPAf4
U-T editorial: Showtime at City Hall
Council to decide: Is it a bailout or historic reform?
By UNION-TRIBUNE
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2010 AT MIDNIGHT
In meeting today to finally decide the fate of a hotly disputed package of potential financial reforms coupled with a sales tax increase on the November ballot, the San Diego City Council will take one of two paths leading out of wholly different views of City Hall, the credibility of its leaders and how the boiling controversy is perceived by voters.
Those on one path, led by council members Donna Frye and Todd Gloria and their new ally, Mayor Jerry Sanders, see the financial package given tentative shape by the council last Friday, and which was still being refined Tuesday, as a historic opportunity. It would, they argue, put the city on sound financial footing for the first time in a decade and for years to come. And they say that the mayor, the council majority and the public employee unions are all now committed to turn the promises of this agreement into real, tangible reforms in coming months, justifying the request to voters for the five-year, half-penny increase in the sales tax.
Without this package, they say, there will be no choice other than major employee layoffs, including police officers and firefighters, and devastating service cutbacks across the board.
Those on the other path, led by Council members Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer, see the financial package as a sham with the veneer of reform. They say in essence that their one-time ally, the mayor, and the council majority cannot be trusted to implement the needed reforms of the city pension and retiree health care plans and to finally enable the private sector to compete fairly with public employees to provide city services. They demand airtight guarantees, upfront, that the reforms will be completed before any sales tax hike is allowed to take effect.
The proposed package, they say, won’t produce the savings and new revenue needed to eliminate the city’s chronic deficits. But they argue that those deficits could be wiped out, along with the fears of layoffs and cutbacks, without a tax increase if only the council would enact meaningful pension, health care reforms and managed competition.
As of Tuesday night, it remained unclear which path would win out at today’s special council session. DeMaio and Faulconer were alone in their publicly stated opposition. But six votes are required to put the tax hike on the ballot and it was uncertain whether there would be six votes to do it.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/04/u-t-editorial-showtime-city-hall/
Chiang orders California cities, counties to report salaries
By Susan Ferriss
sferriss@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 4A
In the wake of the pay scandal in the California city of Bell, state Controller John Chiang has ordered cities and counties to report to him the salaries of elected officials and public employees, such as city managers.
Chiang, a Democrat running for re-election in November, said in a news release Tuesday that posting this information on the controller's website "will make sure that excessive pay is no longer able to escape public scrutiny and accountability."
"The absence of transparency is a breeding ground for waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars," Chiang said in his release.
Eight employees of the controller's office are in Bell this week examining the Los Angeles County city's books, said department spokesman Jacob Roper.
Outcry erupted in Bell, a city of about 40,000, after the Los Angeles Times recently reported that the city manager was earning nearly $800,000 a year and the assistant city manager more than $376,000.
The Bell police chief's salary was $457,000, double what the police chief of Los Angeles earns. Most of Bell's part-time City Council members were earning nearly $100,000 each.
Since 1911, state government code has required that cities and counties report summary financial information to the controller each year by Oct. 15, Roper said.
The aggregate information on local governments' revenue, expenditures and liabilities is put into reports given to legislators.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/04/2934781/chiang-orders-california-cities.html#ixzz0vekeOF5K