Gail Hutton gets more money -- 17% more

Eron Ben-Yehuda

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- While all city department heads received raises

Monday, City Atty. Gail Hutton hit the jackpot when the City Council

agreed to give her a 17% salary hike.

The decision to increase Hutton’s pay from about $116,000 to $137,000

annually comes just days before her office will be audited for alleged

mismanagement.

Department heads have complained that the city attorney’s office doesn’t

respond quickly enough to their requests for legal advice, City

Councilman Ralph Bauer said in June, when the audit was approved. Hutton

admitted at the time that confusion and uncertainty plague her office,

especially when she’s ill or on vacation.

But the council members remained decidedly mum Monday. Hutton, as an

elected official, doesn’t directly answer to the council, but to the

voters.

Hutton might have shown “resentment” if her request for a raise had been

denied, Bauer said.

The council approved the raise by a 6-0 vote, with City Councilman Dave

Sullivan abstaining. He didn’t want to object because that would send too

strong of a message, he said. He said he agreed that a raise was

warranted, just not as much as she received.

Her pay increase, however, raised the ire of one resident who wasn’t shy

about speaking out.

“Not only should she not have a raise, she should be run out of town,”

said David Flynn, who said he received “little or no” help from the city

attorney when he battled his notoriously messy former neighbor Elena

Zagustin.

He and other neighbors had to spend thousands of dollars hiring private

attorneys who finally forced her out of the neighborhood last year, he

said.

Hutton said the amount of her raise “only seems like an enormous amount

of money” because she has been underpaid for so long.

Hutton received a 2% bump in pay last year, said the city’s personnel

director Bill Osness. Even with the latest bump in pay, she’ll still make

less than the city attorneys in Anaheim, Newport Beach, Santa Ana and

Costa Mesa, according to a city memo dated Monday.

To further justify the increase, Hutton in a memo wrote “her legal

efforts have produced” such wildly successful city projects as Pier Plaza

and Duke’s restaurant. But city officials said a “team effort” involving

many city departments made those projects possible.

Details regarding raises for the other department heads will be released

later this week, City Administrator Ray Silver said.

As for the audit, expected to be completed by mid-May, Hutton said she’ll

consider the final report as “suggestions for improvement.” Bauer added

that her office has made “significant” progress in its operations since

the audit was approved.

But Flynn is not impressed, despite the fact that Hutton has led the

city’s legal department for the past 22 years.

“All she’s doing is sitting in her chair, gathering money and waiting for

retirement,” he said.