By now ” and especially if you’re among the 7.31 billion who called, e-mailed and otherwise voiced your anger ” you know that City Council beat a big-time retreat from its original position on that short-lived pay increase. On April 14, council voted 5-3 to raise its per-member salary by about $18,000 from the current $75,386, with Council President Scott Peters and Councilmember Ben Hueso reversing themselves the next day amid the public outcry.
Mayor Jerry Sanders vetoed the measure on April 17 in any event, and council buried this round of talks four days later except for the part about a $9,600 annual car allowance, which it retained amid a 4-4 deadlock.
In council’s defense, the raise wouldn’t have amounted to 24 percent, as many published reports have indicated. The existing car allowance was included in the proposal, meaning that the actual windfall would have been closer to half that percentage. Regardless, Sanders’ stance on the matter rings true, at least on paper.
“We simply can’t afford this pay increase,” he reportedly said in his veto statement, “at a time when there are so many other pressing demands for taxpayer funds.” (Sanders himself stood to score a 29 percent hike under the plan. He makes $100,000 as mayor but accepts $36,000 of that, taking other compensation from his San Diego Police Department pension package.)
Compare that with the Peters-Hueso declaration issued April 16, which notes that Sanders presented his 2009 city budget proposal the day before. “It is clear [in the proposal],” the statement reads, “that the Mayor does not support raises for non-public safety employees this year. Given the depth of the city’s financial issues, it has become apparent that it is not in our community’s best interest to discuss salary increases for the Mayor and Council at this time.”
It’s odd enough that Peters was originally the swing vote on the issue and that Hueso was instrumental in deciding the increase amount. The implication in the statement is even stranger “” that somehow, the city’s financial woes had escaped the councilmembers’ attention until the exact moment Sanders released his budget plan. That’s like taking credit for hitting a target with a gun you suddenly insist was unloaded. Besides, council was hardly in a position to “discuss” pay raises following Sanders’ presentation. It had signed, sealed and delivered its vote on the matter two days prior.
But the really fun kicker, several sentences below that language, marks the statement for what it is “” an 11th-hour flip-flop by two guys who didn’t know what hit ’em once the e-mails started jamming their screens. ¦ [W]e do not want,” they write, “to find San Diego in a situation in which only the wealthy are able to serve as elected officials.”
“Wealthy”? Huh? Since when does a $93,000 annual salary (council’s per-member package had the increase held) make you wealthy in Southern California, with its skyrocketing home prices, nearly $4-a-gallon gas, stratospheric costs of education and ballooning insurance premiums on just about every front? $93,000 in industrially depressed Youngstown, Ohio? You’re wealthy. $93,000 in many smaller cities with traditionally solid tax bases? You’re wealthy. $93,000 in San Diego? You’re doing well, but you’re by no means setting anybody’s world on fire, least of all your own. In this case, “wealthy” is a piece of hastily conceived filler, thrown up in desperation for want of a more appropriate term.
Councilmember Toni Atkins, who voted for the raise but will be term-limited out before it would have taken effect in January, noted that the city charter requires the salary issue be placed on the docket every other year. That’s well and fine, as it gives the seven-member Salary Setting Commission something to do “” and police officers and firefighters did benefit this time, as their unions will receive 6 and 5 percent raises respectively in the fiscal year beginning July 1. But that 6 percent raise for San Diego’s Finest seems way small by comparison, especially since wage freezes caused a glut of officers to quit the force just under three years ago (meanwhile, council raised its own pay a stratospheric 44.5 percent between 1996 and 2002).
If a $1 billion-plus city worker pension deficit isn’t enough to table talks about pay raises, common decency certainly should be. Any such discussion couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time, and the language in the Peters-Hueso sketch only adds insult to injury.
” Martin Jones Westlin is editor of the Downtown News, part of the San Diego Community Newspaper Group.