Yes, Go West

Princely pay for L.A. officials

Since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 Los Angeles has eliminated 1,995 jobs, cut library hours from an average of eight hours a day to five, and revised the schedule of street repaving from every 40 years to once every 120. No matter. Last week the city council approved raises for Los Angeles' 32 department heads, already the highest paid by far in the country. In Los Angeles, the police chief now gets $98,908, compared with $72,000 in New York and $83,884 in Chicago; the Los Angeles fire chief, $93,688 vs. $72,000 in New York and $81,816 in Chicago; the Los Angeles airport chief, $104,483 vs. $87,594 in New York and $71,400 in Chicago.

Salaries and fringe benefits now account for 75% of Los Angeles' $1.5 billion budget. Says City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who makes only $43,923 a year: "It's a vicious cycle. It has to stop." According to him, the bloated wage scale results from a lack of fiscal restraint by the council and an arcane "prevailing wage clause" in the city charter, dating from 1925. In practice, the prevailing wage clause, requiring the city to pay its employees salaries at least equal to comparable jobs in the private sector, has become the rock-bottom minimum from which wage demands spiral upward. .

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