Supervisors Likely to Kill Their Pay Hike

SANTA ANA —  Under fire for taking a pay hike in the midst of county layoffs and budget tightening, Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Roger R. Stanton announced Thursday that they will move to rescind the 4% raises.

County officials said it appears likely the two supervisors have the support they need on the board to cancel the $3,282 annual raises that they approved for themselves Tuesday.

“It’s a question of timing,” Stanton said during a hurriedly called press conference at the County Hall of Administration. “It’s a question of showing a little bit of example, in terms of austerity.”

Board Chairman Vasquez, who said his office had received about 70 phone calls on the subject and that he had also discussed the issue with friends and supporters, added that the reversal was evidence that the supervisors “are being responsive to the constituents.”

The two supervisors, both of whom are considered likely candidates for higher office, said they will ask their colleagues to join them in voting to cancel the raise when the board meets next week.

To scuttle the raises, Vasquez and Stanton would need a third vote to achieve a majority on the five-person board. But both said that they had consulted separately with Supervisor Don R. Roth and that he had indicated he would back them.

The news of their reversal overjoyed some of the roughly 30 demonstrators who protested at Tuesday’s board meeting and demanded that the raise be rescinded.

Demonstrators had argued that it was the wrong time for board members to take raises, with the economy in a recession and the county government forced to make its first layoffs since 1978.

Although members of the Taxpayers Action Network, the local group that led that protest, had asked for a 10% pay cut to all top county officials--rather than just a cancellation of the 4% hike--demonstrators nevertheless said the reversal by the two supervisors proved that their protests had an impact on the board.

“It proves that when people do get angry, the supervisors listen,” said Richard Avard, executive director of the network. “We’re not ecstatic, because we don’t think anyone (in the county work force) should be getting a raise, but we’re happy.”

Leo Deterding, an Anaheim Hills resident who addressed the board Tuesday, said the supervisors had bowed to public pressure.

“I think they’re damn well aware that they wouldn’t be elected again if they went through with the raise,” he said. “They may not even with this, but they’ve got a better chance. . . . I’m glad they’re going to do this.”

Others were not so pleased.

An irritated Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said Thursday evening that he had been told of the plan late in the day, and added that he understood that Roth was supporting it, giving the proposal enough support to pass. Roth was unavailable for comment.

“I hear they have it,” Riley said. “If they’ve got the three votes, I doubt that (Supervisor) Harriett (M. Wieder) or I will bother to oppose it.”

But Riley also angrily suggested that the move by his two colleagues was grandstanding, and he complained that they had plunged ahead without even bothering to discuss the issue in detail with him or with Wieder, who was out of town.

“I don’t know why they’re in such a hurry that they wouldn’t at least extend the courtesy to me of discussing this,” Riley said. “I’m really shocked. Why did they have to do this today? Did somebody ask Roger (Stanton) that?”

At their press conference, Vasquez and Stanton insisted that their decision was not politically motivated and denied that they had caved in to pressure from the anti-tax activists who demonstrated loudly during this week’s board meeting.

More effective than the “theatrics” of the anti-tax demonstrators, Stanton said, were the phone calls that he received from friends and longtime supporters.

“Please, I implore you to take things at face value,” Stanton said. “The face value of this is that Gaddi and I got together today, and . . . (said) ‘Let’s do the right thing.’ ”

Vasquez agreed. “We have, over the last several days, heard from our constituents,” he said. “This was not a good time in the face of the economic situation.”

Under the plan offered by Vasquez and Stanton, all five board members would forgo a $3,282 pay hike that would have brought the supervisors’ salaries to $85,336 a year. The action would not affect increases given to other top county workers and elected officials, all of whom received the same 4% hike.

It would also revoke a plan to make the supervisors’ annual pay hikes match those given to their top managers. That would have kept the board from having to cast a vote each year on its own salary hikes.

But a few details of their proposal remain murky. Even during the press conference, it appeared that the two supervisors had not considered some of the potential ramifications.

For instance, revoking the entire pay raise package could nullify a cap that the board placed on its salaries when it voted not to allow them to exceed the amount paid to Municipal Court judges. Stanton and Vasquez said they support that cap and regretted that it would be eliminated along with the rest of the salary package.

“That’s the unfortunate part,” Stanton said.

Asked why the cap could not be retained, however, Vasquez paused, then said that he and his colleague would study that suggestion. Stanton agreed, and pledged to seek a way to rescind the raise without revoking the cap.

In addition to protests about the size and timing of their pay hike, the supervisors have come under fire in some quarters from citizens who believe the raise was handled inappropriately. In particular, some of the demonstrators at this week’s meeting suggested that the board members had allowed too little public input into the pay raise question.

Stanton and Vasquez defended their actions, noting that they had used the same process that has been followed year after year, and that the item had been announced for members of the audience. The process also is the same one used to handle pay raises for all other county employees.

But Stanton conceded that some residents had not heard of the pay proposal in advance, and he pledged to correct that in future years.

“This is the first time that something like this has ever happened,” Stanton said. “As far as I’m concerned, it will never happen again.”