4 O.C. Officials End 5% Cut, Take Full Pay

Four elected officeholders who cut their salaries by 5% as a symbolic gesture to share the pain of Orange County’s bankruptcy have gone back to taking their full paychecks, county officials confirmed Wednesday.

Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton, Supervisor William G. Steiner and Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis started taking their full pay in June when the county issued nearly $1 billion in bonds to buy its way out of bankruptcy.

Clerk-Recorder Gary L. Granville started taking his full pay in November 1995.

The low-profile move to reinstate the supervisors’ full salaries was in contrast to the public fanfare that accompanied the pay cuts, which amounted to roughly $4,000 yearly.

Steiner said it was always his “intention to end [the pay cut] when the county got out of bankruptcy. . . . The pay cut was mostly symbolic.”

Granville, who has occasionally been at odds with the board and the county chief executive officer since the bankruptcy, said he stopped taking a pay cut because he had become “disillusioned” with the county leadership.

“The pay cut was open to everyone in the county. Everyone was encouraged to sacrifice, and only four [county officials] took it,” said Granville, who makes $83,075 a year. Additionally, Granville said, he resumed his regular pay because of some unexpected health expenses incurred by his mother-in-law.

Stanton and Lewis did not return calls seeking comment.

The supervisors’ current annual salary is $82,056, not including stipends and other cash benefits that can add up to $10,000 to their total compensation. Lewis’ annual salary is $104,582.

Several community activists said they were disappointed that the officeholders abolished their pay cuts.

“It looks like they are going back to their old ways. We thought they were going to take the pay cut for a long time,” said Carole Walters, a member of the community watchdog group Committees of Correspondence. “What they are doing is playing games with us again.”

Bruce Whitaker, president of the Committees of Correspondence, accused the officials of trying to seize the political spotlight when the public’s attention was focused on the county, then going back to business as usual when scrutiny eased.

“They’ve done nothing to be respected in any way,” Whitaker said.

Days after the Dec. 6, 1994, bankruptcy, Stanton, Steiner and then-Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez pledged to cut their pay to share the burden of the financial collapse.

Several months later, however, the supervisors had taken no formal steps to cut their pay. They said they encountered problems within the county bureaucracy and could not officially deduct anything from their paychecks until a new county ordinance was passed.

Before the ordinance was passed, Stanton wrote a personal check reimbursing the county a portion of his salary. Steiner reduced his salary by making donations to charities. Even after the ordinance passed, Vasquez did not reduce his salary until several months later.

Supervisors Jim Silva and Marian Bergeson, who were not on the board when the county went bankrupt, made no promises to cut their base salaries but have not accepted car allowances or the use of county-owned vehicles.

Bergeson also refused to accept stipends for sitting on the county’s transportation board. A transportation official said Wednesday that Bergeson, who was not available for comment, resumed taking those $100-per-meeting stipends in January.

Supervisor Don Saltarelli, who was appointed to the board last October to replace Vasquez, said he receives a car allowance. Other elected officials, including Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and Sheriff Brad Gates, refused to cut their salaries during the bankruptcy crisis. No non-elected officials voluntarily reduced their own pay.

“Among those of us who did take a reduction, there was some resentment toward those officials in the county who make over $100,000 and didn’t cut their salaries by one dime,” Steiner said.

Most county employees, who had been scheduled to receive pay raises shortly after the financial crisis hit, saw the increases suspended until after the county emerged from bankruptcy. When that happened, however, they received their raises, retroactive to the date on which they were originally scheduled to take effect. The supervisors were the only county employees who had not received a pay raise in several years.