County Gave $3 Million in Bonuses : Government: Molina calls for a review of the program in light of budget problems. The largest award was for $10,742.

Financially strapped Los Angeles County found room in last year’s budget to award $3 million in employee bonuses, records show.

The awards include $4,500 paid last month to Francis J. Dowling, acting chief of the Department of Mental Health. Dowling has been criticized for spending $864,000 on office renovations when clinics have been closed because of funding problems.

The largest of the bonuses was $10,742 to a mid-level bureaucrat in the health department.

Supervisor Gloria Molina, who has complained that it is difficult for her to find out how the county spends taxpayer money, learned of bonus expenditures in a leaked interoffice memo from Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon.

In light of the Aug. 2 memo, which revealed that Dixon awarded $85,600 in bonuses to 37 members of his staff, Molina has called for a review of the program.

Dixon’s memo was issued 10 days after supervisors approved a $12-billion budget providing no cost-of-living pay raises for the bulk of the 85,000-member county work force.

County policy allows the awarding of bonuses for extraordinary work. They are meted out on top of cost-of-living salary increases or merit raises, ordinarily out of funds left over at the end of the fiscal year each June 30.

Robert Alaniz, a spokesman for Molina, said the newly elected supervisor was unaware of the bonus program until she received the leaked memo.

“If there is money left over,” Alaniz said, “then the board should determine how that money is spent.” He said some bonuses were paid to mid-level bureaucrats who also received merit raises. “That’s double dipping.”

Dixon said department heads do not report bonuses to the supervisors “any more than they advise the board of any other expenditure, so long as it is within their budget.”

An employee association also criticized the bonus program.

“It sends the wrong message to the rank and file who have been told that there is no money for salary increases,” said Guido De Rienzo of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “It stinks.”

The bonuses awarded by Dixon included payments of $2,000 to $2,500 each to five staff members for “outstanding performance” in the $2-million redecorating of Dixon’s suite of offices.

Dixon also awarded the $4,500 to Dowling for serving as acting mental health department director.

“I did not give myself that bonus,” Dowling said Thursday, pointing out that Dixon had awarded it to compensate him for taking on added responsibilities without a pay raise.

Since Dixon’s memo leaked, the chief administrative officer has sent out another letter asking department heads to voluntarily defer 10% of their pay as well as put off their merit raises.

“I refer to it as the executive sacrifice plan,” Dixon said. Dixon said that he has received no response to his request, which would allow executives to collect the 10% they defer plus their merit raises next year.

As for bonuses, Dixon said that unless he hears otherwise from the board, they will be permitted if departments end the fiscal year with unspent money.

Bonuses can be up to 11% of an employee’s salary.

“While we have a difficult budget, it is at difficult times you most need to get people to do some special things,” Dixon said.

Dixon said some of his staff members who received bonuses were instrumental in developing a formula that provided the county with an additional $200 million in federal revenues and prevented health cuts.

He said his staff should share in the savings from reducing the employees in the chief administrative office from 600 four years ago to 400 today. “A lot of those people are working harder, and some of them are doing exceptional things that deserve recognition,” Dixon said.

Dixon approves all bonuses under authority granted him in 1984 by the supervisors. He said he generally follows department heads’ recommendations as long as they can fund the bonuses out of their own budgets.

Usually, lump-sum bonuses are awarded to employees for “outstanding performance,” such as finding a way to save the county money or taking on more work.

Last year, nearly $1.6 million of the $3.1 million in total bonuses paid went to about 900 deputy district attorneys as a way to appease their complaints about receiving less pay than lawyers in the county counsel’s office.

Many deputy public defenders who represent poor people also received bonuses. They felt “rather sheepish” about it in light of the county’s financial problems, said Assistant Public Defender David Meyer, “but the overriding principle was that we didn’t want deputy public defenders paid less than deputy district attorneys.”

The state has a bonus program, but Gov. Pete Wilson has ordered it suspended because of the state’s budget crisis. The city of Los Angeles does not award bonuses.