City’s rising salaries under scrutiny

Former Newport Beach City Councilman John Heffernan is kicking himself for not looking more closely at city employee salaries when he was an elected official.

But he’s looking now, and he wants the council to join him in his scrutiny. Startled by seemingly huge salary and benefit increases, Heffernan last week gave the council a chart of salary and benefit costs in the 2002-03 budget year compared with the 2006-07 budget, which showed increases of as much as 47% for some positions.

Heffernan said his interest was piqued a few months ago when he was considering running for his old council seat. He interviewed with the city firefighters about a possible endorsement, and they wanted to talk about their compensation, Heffernan said.

“That was basically all they talked about — and the fact that they weren’t happy with my reluctant vote for their pay increase last time around,” he said.

His reluctance stemmed from a retirement program that he believes takes away any incentive to work after age 50.

So he started examining the budget — a tough job, because it includes thousands of line items, he said.

Among the results Heffernan found:

Heffernan acknowledged that the upward creep of salary and benefit costs isn’t exclusive to Newport Beach, and he said he’s not suggesting the city should cut compensation.

“This isn’t a knock on the city of Newport Beach or any firemen or anybody else. It’s just saying let’s keep an eye on this,” he said. “Let’s be clear about who’s underpaid and who’s not.”

He also blamed himself because as chairman of the council’s finance committee he didn’t look deeply into the budget.

Bludau said it looks like Heffernan’s figures are correct, but the increases are probably consistent with other cities in the area. Retirement costs for every city in California “went through the roof starting in 2001,” Bludau said.

City employee salaries have been in the range of 5% a year for the last four years, he said, adding that Heffernan was on the council when Bludau’s salary was bumped up significantly.

But the numbers aren’t a surprise to the council or the staff, because they’re discussed every year during the budget process, Bludau said.

He pointed out that city revenues have grown even faster than employee compensation. The salaries are in line with other Orange County cities, and other cities offer benefits that make their total compensation higher than Newport’s, he said.

“Newport Beach is not the highest-paying city,” Bludau said.