Salary committee to recommend smaller raise for Contra Costa supervisors

MARTINEZ — The 33 percent pay raise Contra Costa County supervisors voted themselves last year — and later rescinded under pressure — wasn’t just a political miscalculation. It was bad math, according to an independent committee asked to determine an appropriate salary for supervisors and remove politics from the process.

The committee, which is seeking public input this month before making its final recommendations, has found that Contra Costa supervisors aren’t as underpaid as they thought.

“If you look at base salary, it looks like they’re really far behind,” said Steve Weir, the county’s former clerk-recorder, whom supervisors appointed to facilitate the compensation committee’s work. “But if you consider total compensation and compare it to peer counties, and you factor in the cost of living in those counties, they’re not as far behind.”

The supervisors only considered how their base pay stacked up to peers last year when they voted to raise their salaries from $97,483 to $129,227 and peg their wages to the salaries of Superior Court judges.

The vote sparked a revolt from county workers who had received much smaller pay increases. Faced with the likelihood that voters would overturn the raise in a special election, supervisors rescinded it, granted themselves a modest 7 percent wage hike and formed the committee to study how much they should be paid.

The salary committee is expected to propose a moderate salary boost for supervisors. An additional 12 percent raise to roughly $117,000 would put the supervisors’ salary in the middle of their peer group. A 7 percent raise to $111,567 would place supervisors at the 37.5 percentile.

The smaller raise has more support on the committee, Weir said, because Contra Costa County workers are generally paid between 8 and 18 percent below median wages in other counties.

The committee, which has representatives from business, labor and taxpayer groups, also rejected tying the supervisors’ salary to those of judges, which is the method used in Alameda County.

“We just didn’t see any logic in that,” said Rick Wise, of the East Bay Leadership Council. “It’s a very different job from a judge.”

Instead, the committee is leaning toward recommending that supervisors convene an independent salary commission every few years to recommend whether a raise is warranted and to phase it in gradually.

With their salaries always a sensitive political issue, supervisors have struggled to manage their compensation. They voted themselves a 59.5 percent raise in 2006, and then found themselves giving back money during the Great Recession before granting themselves another big pay raise last year.

The brouhaha over the most recent pay raise resulted in the commission reviewing over 500 pages of documents and comparing the supervisors’ salaries and benefits with nine other counties that had similar populations, budgets, home values and household income.

The review showed that Contra Costa supervisors had low base salaries but relatively generous benefits, including a pension enhancement worth more than $13,000 annually and both a car allowance and mileage reimbursement.

Total compensation for Contra Costa supervisors is $147,929 annually. That placed them on the lower end of the peer group that included Alameda, Sacramento, San Mateo, Fresno and Sonoma counties. Alameda supervisors were the highest paid based on total compensation and cost of living. San Francisco supervisors were the lowest paid.

Supervisors on Tuesday didn’t want to comment until the committee releases its final recommendation later this month.

Supervisor Candace Andersen, who cast the lone vote last year against the 33 percent pay raise, said she liked the direction the committee was taking with regard to establishing a salary commission and phasing in future raises.

“For most people, it wasn’t that we didn’t deserve more,” she said. “It was that any raise of substance should be phased in rather than being granted all at once.”

The committee is scheduled to hold two additional meetings before making its final recommendations, with the next one set for 2:30 p.m. Thursday at 651 Pine St. in Martinez.

Contact Matthew Artz at 510-208-6435.