A proposal is on the table to increase the salaries of members of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors by $56,000 to about $171,000 annually.
The board on Tuesday set a hearing date of Feb. 25 to vote on whether to increase their own pay.
The proposal sparked instant opposition from Andy Caldwell, executive director of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture & Business, who spoke out at Tuesday’s meeting.
Caldwell called the pay increase “obscene.” He said county supervisors choose to run for office and that it’s not the same as having a job in the private sector.
“You don’t have a job,” Caldwell said. “You volunteered for public service. It’s not like you can say, ‘Well, you know, being a county supervisor in Santa Barbara County doesn’t pay well enough. I am going to move to LA and become a county supervisor there.’ You all know it doesn’t work that way.”
Human Resources has been revising management and executive compensation during the past few years to secure pay equity through a market-based approach involving data of
comparable counties. The board last year approved salary increases for appointed departments as a result of salary surveys.
The survey compares Santa Barbara County to counties such as Marin, Monterey, Orange, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Ventura. Santa Barbara County’s maximum salary for a supervisor is $115,000, and the only county that was lower based on the survey was San Luis Obispo, which was at $105,560.
Supervisors in Ventura County make $171,300 annually as a maximum. San Diego County was the highest at $219,540.
Board chair Laura Capps said county staff proposed the changes after doing a market analysis and identifying disparities in how county elected officials were paid locally versus similar counties.
“I look forward to hearing the analysis the staff presents as well as listening to my colleagues at our board meeting,” Capps said.
The salary increases would be tied to 70% of what a California Superior Court judge earns, which the staff report noted is a growing trend in California for other counties to use as a benchmark.
Caldwell said most of the supervisors do a commendable job, but “it’s public service. It’s not a job.”
Supervisor Joan Hartman said, “I understand the sensitivity the public has about decisions like this.”
She said she was still considering the matter and had not fully examined the issue. She took exception to Caldwell’s comments.
“I can unequivocally state, the work of the Board of Supervisors is not part time,” Hartmann said.
The proposal to raise the supervisors’ salaries is not the only one on the agenda for Feb. 25. All elected department heads, including the county sheriff, district attorney, auditor-controller, treasurer and assessor, are up for salary increases.
Raises for those positions would range from 5.7% for auditor-controller to 14.9% for the sheriff. The recommendation is to create six salary steps, similar to management classes.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said the reason the increase is so much is because the county didn’t listen to the citizens committee in 2014, which did an in-depth analysis, reviewing the salaries of all of the benchmark counties and returned with a recommendation that called for a large increase.
At the time, Lavagnino said, the board was hesitant to implement the increases, which has only exacerbated the problem.
“Board members now receive almost 30% less than our own staff,” Lavagnino said. “We are also paid substantially less than all of our benchmark counties except San Luis Obispo.”
He acknowledged the potential for backlash.
“The reality is people are not going to like it regardless of how much it is,” Lavagnino said. “Most of the emails I have received so far are from people who have very little information about what we do.”
He said the supervisors oversee 23 departments, a $1.6 billion budget and 4,700 employees, and yet are paid the same as an entry-level manager.
“The sad part is some people are calling this a part-time job,” Lavagnino said. “We routinely put in 50-hour workweeks.”