Board Seeks Public’s View on Salaries : Finances: State commission will announce preliminary decisions, then hold hearing. Pay for governor, legislators and others is expected to increase.

A little-noticed state commission that has been given power to set salaries for state officeholders, including the governor and legislators, decided Friday that it would make its preliminary decisions public Nov. 15 and then hold a hearing to solicit citizen reactions before establishing new annual salaries Dec. 3.

The deliberations of the California Citizens Compensation Commission seem likely to result in higher salaries for legislators, now paid a base wage of $40,816, plus benefits and expense allowances worth another $25,000 to $35,000.

Salaries for the governor, now $85,000, and the current state constitutional officers, ranging from $72,500 to $77,500, also may be increased.

The group’s chairman, Claude Brinegar, said Friday that the state insurance commissioner, which has been an appointive job and will become an elected one, has been receiving more in salary ($95,000) than the governor. He indicated that the commission will decide to make the governor better paid than the insurance commissioner in the future.

Brinegar also said the lieutenant governor should get the smallest salary of any of the statewide officers. He said he had read the duties for each office and the lieutenant governor “doesn’t seem to do a lot except wait.”

Brinegar, a vice chairman of Union Oil and a former transportation secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was appointed to head the seven-member salary commission by Gov. George Deukmejian in August, after voters approved Proposition 112, which prescribed that the new commission, not the Legislature, will set salaries and some benefit levels.

The commission’s decision Dec. 3 will not be subject to approval by the governor or the Legislature. Deukmejian appointed five Republicans and two Democrats to the commission, whose members have staggered terms of two to six years.

On Friday, the group seemed a little nonplussed when it held its second public hearing in Los Angeles and, just as at the first hearing in Sacramento Oct. 5, few people testified. The Sacramento hearing lasted 32 minutes, the Los Angeles hearing about an hour.

Brinegar said that because he assumes public interest will eventually increase, he had decided to hold the third hearing after the preliminary decisions are made.

At Friday’s hearing, Voter Revolt Chairman Harvey Rosenfield said legislators in particular deserve no salary increase. However, representatives of two other organizations, Common Cause and the United Organization of Taxpayers, contended that sound public policy requires that some increases be awarded.

None of the speakers talked much about the salaries of the governor, attorney general or other state constitutional officers.

Rosenfield said the California Legislature “has fallen into disrepute” and insisted that any increase would be an “affront” to the public. Actually, he told the commissioners, “you should be considering a pay reduction.”

But Ernest Dynda, chairman of the United Organization of Taxpayers, the group organized by the late tax-cut crusader Howard Jarvis, said an increase to a $60,000 base salary would be appropriate for the legislators.

Describing himself as a strong supporter of Proposition 140, one of two legislative term-limit initiatives on the November ballot, Dynda said he felt it was sure to pass and the new non-career legislators he envisioned being elected would need a reasonable salary to afford serving in Sacramento.

Lisa Foster, acting executive director of California Common Cause, also urged the commission to consider an appropriate increase, although she gave no amounts.

Foster said the commissioners “should measure the worth of the office, not of the people holding the offices today.”

By this standard, she said, it is important to pay legislators enough to keep them solvent and not so little as to encourage them to be dishonest.