Wages of county employees to be available online
George Watson, Staff Writer San Bernardino Sun
Article Launched: 12/09/2007 09:33:14 PM PST
At an average of more than $52,000 a year, getting a job with San Bernardino County means a better salary than the average full-time adult worker here.
The figure for the county's nearly 19,000 employees also exceeds most other professions in the Inland Empire.
"One of the things that you find is people in the public sector have more education, and therefore are better paid," said local economist John Husing.
In fact, only workers in the utility sector made more than county workers on average - $78,000 annually, Husing said.
"The workers in that sector are highly technical, even the blue-collar workers," he said.
As part of an effort by The Sun to let readers know how much government workers are paid, salary information for each Inland Empire city, school district and county will be posted at www.sbsun.com. This is the first in an occasional series on the subject.
Perusing the county documents shows that County Administrative Officer Mark Uffer is the highest-compensated employee. He makes $121.35 an hour - or $252,408 a year.
Other top wage earners among elected officials include Sheriff Gary Penrod at $84.87 an hour ($176,529), District Attorney Michael A. Ramos at $82.38 ($171,350) an hour and Assessor Bill Postmus at $67.87 ($141,169).
Those salaries are set by Measure K.
Members of the Board of Supervisors earn $63.14 an hour ($131,331), a figure that is set via Measure P.
There's no need to figure out who the lowest-paid county employees are. They're everyone making minimum wage, which is $7.50 an hour ($15,600 annually). Those employees are temporary, typically doing clerical duties for health services/transitional assistance work at an hourly rate.
Determining pay grades is no simple task, said Andrew Lamberto, director of the county's Human Resources Department.
"I'd love to tell you that it's an exact science," he said. "I wish there was a Kelly Blue Book for this."
Structuring pay grades is begun by the Human Resources Department by surveying surrounding counties, and some similarly sized ones to the north, such as Kern County, he said.
Los Angeles County's salaries are a big factor, Lamberto said, "because we seem to be competing more and more with them."
But the process is more than just getting some salary figures, he added.
"We have to dig into the classification to make sure it's an apples-to-apples comparison," Lamberto said.
If Human Resources can match approximately 75 percent of the pay grades' job descriptions and duties, "we will consider it close enough," Lamberto said.
"You rarely find an exact match," he added. "Everybody does it a bit differently."
Human Resources then assesses the reporting structure of the position by asking a couple of questions. How does it compare to the position's bosses? And for the subordinates? What are the normal spreads for the pay range?
Once those questions are answered, Human Resources assesses the difficulty in recruiting for the post. Is it an easy fit? Or something competitive?
"An example may be a medical position, like, somebody who knows how to do something under a new technology," Lamberto said.
The information is then presented to Uffer's staff.
"It gets evaluated there, and then we have it," Lamberto said.
The Human Resources Department tries to reassess every classification each year, particularly management positions not represented by a union, which is generally the case for those employees.
Altogether, the county has more than 18,000 employees; all but about 200 are exempt.
While most unclassified employees are not represented by a union, the bulk of the county's work force is. Those employees are working under one of the eight contracts negotiated with the county by their respective unions.
County officials are about to get to work on the biggest contract, a pact with the San Bernardino Public Employees Association.
Contracts with the unions traditionally are three-year deals, although not in every case.
Salary breakdown
The breakdown of average salaries of adult workers in the Inland Empire:
Utility sector: $78,083
Construction: $41,474
Manufacturing: $39,902
Wholesale trade: $43,430
Retail trade: $27,112
Trucking: $38,046
Information services: $42,747
Finance/insurance: $51,978
All service: $29,954
Average for all workers: $33,995
Source: California Employment Development Department data for 2006
Check, please
Taxpayers pick up tab for county officials' meals, trips
By George Watson, Rod Leveque and Andrew Edwards, Staff Writers
Article Launched: 11/14/2007 09:13:24 PM PST
It's good to be a county official.
Elected San Bernardino County politicians and their top staff can drop off rented SUVs to the valet service at posh hotels while dining on tuna or steak in such places as Kansas City, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and even Los Angeles.
Lose your cell phone charger, or the $448 cell phone itself? Charge them to taxpayers.
When one set of binoculars isn't enough, buy three of them. It's even OK to splurge on the $130 model that zooms in on what you're looking at and lets you snap digital photos of it.
Credit card expenses released by the county late Tuesday afternoon detail the spending habits of elected leaders and their senior staff members from February 2006 to July of this year.
And spend they did.
Supervisors and staff took dozens of lunches on the taxpayers' dime, and often paid for guests, though who most of those people were is for taxpayers to guess.
County attorneys repeatedly blacked out that information, redacting it under any one of three "privileges" - personnel or attorney-client matters, or the legal term known as deliberative process.
Bob Page, chief of staff for 5th District Supervisor Josie Gonzales, said expense reports were redacted based on the judgment of county counsel, not the supervisor's office. Gonzales' reports contained several items that were blacked out.
Page said the deleted items were references to people other than the supervisor or himself, and during an interview Wednesday identified them by name as staff members for Gonzales and Supervisor Paul Biane.
Page said he would give The Sun largely unredacted versions of Gonzales' documents.
Records show that since 2006 - as the nation's economic downturn enveloped Southern California - the five county supervisors and their top staffers spent at least $100,000 on meals, hotels and incidentals.
"These people need to be reminded they are public servants, and the public is not there to serve them," said David Kline, spokesman for the California Taxpayers' Association. "Taxpayers are scrimping and saving every dollar to feed their families, to pay for education and health care, and they shouldn't also be forced to pay for an elected official to live high on the hog."
The biggest expenses were for travel to conferences or other boards that supervisors sit on. Some travel was as short as Supervisor Gary Ovitt's repeated stays in Los Angeles, including two nights at the Radisson for $430.
Mark Kirk, Ovitt's chief of staff, said his boss needs to stay overnight in L.A. even though he lives just 37 miles east, in Ontario. Ovitt often travels to Los Angeles for Southern California Association of Governments meetings, which often run late and typically start so early the next morning that the supervisor would have to get up at 4 a.m. to drive in, Kirk said.
SCAG reimbursed the county for Ovitt's expenses, Kirk pointed out, then acknowledged that SCAG also is funded by taxpayers.
Kirk said under Ovitt's direction, staff members try to be judicious about spending.
"I can't think of any extravagant expenditures at taxpayers' expense," Kirk said of Ovitt's office, adding that he was willing to review any expenditures, line item by line item.
Other trips took elected leaders to the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas, the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C, and as far as China, where the county has led a pair of business-promoting ventures. Once there, rather than sampling some wonton soup or tasty duck, they spent hundreds of dollars at places like Ruth's Chris Steak House in Hong Kong.
Some expenditures just seem hard to explain. Paul Biane, chairman of the board of supervisors, bought three sets of binoculars over a six-month period from May to November of last year. One is for his car. One is for his Rancho Cucamonga office, and the other, which can also take digital photos, is kept at the County Government Center in San Bernardino.
"In San Bernardino, you can actually see Crestline from the fifth floor (of his office), so if there is a fire, floods or snow, I can see that," said Biane when asked about the multiple sets of binoculars.
More important, he said, it's easier to assess damage during fires from a distance with the binoculars.
Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales and her aides racked up thousands of dollars in airfare and hotel bills to attend various conferences in recent years.
In March, Gonzales, her chief of staff and another staffer attended the Local Government Commission conference at The Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.
The Awhahnee is not some cheap roadside inn. Bob Page, Gonzales' chief of staff, paid nearly $1,100 for three nights' lodging at the hotel.
Breakfast in the hotel dining room ran up to about $88. Dinner in the lounge - where sandwiches and salads are on the menu - was almost $80.
"It is a very pricey hotel, but that is where the conference was taking place," Page said.
Page said Gonzales prefers to stay at whatever hotel is hosting a conference.
"The prices look expensive, but when you're going to a conference, you want to be where the conferences are," Page said. "You don't want to spend money on a 15- to 20-minute cab ride."
Page said Gonzales has tried to pare down expenses by not making repeat visits to events that don't meet expectations. He said attending conferences and making trips to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to meet legislators was a necessary part of Gonzales' duties when she was new to the job.
First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt had only one big bill - a $257 flight to Sacramento for an undisclosed purpose - and a smattering of other expenses, mostly things like food and cab fare while attending conferences or visiting the far-flung reaches of his district.
Based on the documents, 3rd District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger appears one to be of the more frugal county officials.
Hansberger's receipts are chiefly for meals, the priciest of which was $50 at Isabella's, a Mexican restaurant in San Bernardino. He also had a handful of other lunch and dinner expenses ranging from $15 to $30 per meal.
The heftier credit card bills weren't limited to the Board of Supervisors and staff.
The Assessor's office spent nearly $4,000 in March to send assistant assessors Adam Aleman and Jim Erwin on a four-day trip to San Jose to get their state-certified appraiser licenses. Erwin recently resigned from his post after 11 months on the job.
The political allies of Assessor Bill Postmus were each appointed to their positions with no prior experience, and needed the training to perform their duties.
The co-workers flew out of Ontario International Airport on the same flight, but didn't carpool, meaning taxpayers had to fork over $75 each for them to park.
Both also stayed at the same $325-per-night hotel, but didn't share a room.
Aleman said Wednesday it wasn't practical to carpool to the airport because he lives west of it and Erwin lives to the east.
His explanation for why he and Erwin didn't double up in a room - and save the taxpayers some $1,300 - was less clear.
"To be honest with you, the reason why - that was just the way it was scheduled," he said. "We had a place that was right near the testing center. That was just the arrangements we made."
During a separate trip to Sacramento that same month, Erwin spent $465 for a single night's stay at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento. The reason for the trip is not explained in the documents
Paula Nowicki, chief of staff to Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt - and the person who approves his expenses - dropped $240 in March for a dinner at the fancy Al Tiramisu Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C. The menu that night for Nowicki and her guests included a few $30 pasta plates and two $6 bottles of water.
Sometimes, recipients of the county's largesse were in the service industry.
Take Kirk's receipt from Threadgill's, a restaurant in Austin, Texas. The names of his two guests were redacted from the county documents, but the bill showed that Kirk tipped their server $10 - 38 percent - on a $35.82 bill.
