Bucking City Hall System Pays Off : Port’s Financial Czar Wins 5% Pay Increase

As chief financial officer for the Port of Los Angeles, Rami Furman knows a lot about money.

He knows how to invest it, how to manage it and how to budget it.

He also knows how to earn it. Just ask any member of the Los Angeles City Council, which broke from tradition this week and voted to give the port’s financial czar a 5% raise to $85,629 a year.

“At first, I wasn’t crazy about raising his salary, but he made a very convincing presentation to me,” said harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores after voting for the raise. “Frankly, I think he is brilliant.”

Added San Fernando Valley Councilman Joel Wachs: “The guy made a great case.”

By a 13-1 vote, the council approved a package of salary increases on Tuesday that included the $4,067 raise for Furman. What makes Furman’s raise different from the others is that he bucked the system to get it--something that happens very seldom at City Hall.

For the past several weeks, Furman, who began working for the port in November, 1983, for $51,406 a year, made the rounds at City Hall to present his case for a raise. Since a 4% cost of living increase in July, Furman’s salary has been $81,562.

He said that was not enough. The city’s salary experts said it was.

“I am 49% below the salary range for private industry,” Furman said in an interview. “But that is not the issue. The issue is that there were significant changes in my job responsibilities and their impact on the port.”

A reorganization of the port’s staff in 1986 by Ezunial Burts, the port’s executive director, resulted in a major shuffling of responsibilities within the port’s top management. Furman, who now reports directly to Burts, assumed a series of new tasks, including budget preparation and risk management.

Last March, in a move to reward Furman, Burts recommended that he receive a 9% salary increase. In a letter to Keith Comrie, the city administrative officer, whose office makes salary recommendations to the City Council, Burts argued that Furman “has assumed additional responsible functions which should be recognized in terms of compensation.”

But Assistant City Administrative Officer Jerome R. Selmer, who oversees wages for the city’s 42,000 employees, reviewed the request and persuaded Burts to back off. Selmer said the increase would put Furman’s salary out of line with employees holding positions at a similar level in other departments in the city.

As an example, he noted that City Treasurer Leonard Rittenberg, who handles investments for the entire city, makes $77,110. Selmer, who described his own job as one of higher responsibility than Furman’s, makes $84,000. Burts, the highest paid port employee, makes $115,944.

‘Internal Balance’

“It was an effort to achieve an internal balance within the Harbor Department and a balance throughout the city,” Selmer explained to the City Council.

But although Burts accepted Selmer’s advice, Furman did not. In fact, Furman was so angry that he sent a letter of rebuttal to Comrie and scheduled an appearance before the City Council’s Personnel and Labor Relations Committee. He also met privately with Flores.

“The CAO’s surprisingly brief discussion supporting his recommendation for no salary adjustment . . . is factually incorrect, misleading and does not address the basis for the request,” Furman wrote to Comrie.

Furman, armed with diagrams and charts on poster-size paper, was able to persuade Wachs, a member of the personnel committee, that he deserved a raise. Committee member Joy Picus, also a San Fernando Valley council member, however, was not swayed.

About 1,300 of the city’s 42,000 employees are in so-called “non-represented classes,” meaning they do not belong to unions, and their wages must be negotiated individually. Picus said a vote to give Furman a raise was an invitation for the other non-union employees to try the same thing.

“You are asking for it,” Picus warned her colleagues during a council debate on the increase last week. “You are asking for (other city employees) to lobby you.”

Brushed Concerns Aside

But the council, led by Flores and Wachs, brushed aside concerns about an army of civil servants descending on the council chambers. Flores described Furman’s request as “an unusual situation,” and recommended a 5% increase--a compromise between nothing and 9%.

Picus, who originally had opposed placing Furman’s name on the list of employees to receive raises, later voted for the increase when the council approved the entire list. In the end only San Fernando Valley Councilman Ernani Bernardi voted against the raises.

Furman, who will get the new $85,629 salary if Mayor Tom Bradley approves the increase, said the raise is not much, but he said it proves a point.

“It is a matter of principle,” Furman said. “It shows the system works.”