A 2018 ballot measure that doubled pay for San Diego City Council members is already attracting a broader pool of better-qualified candidates, including five attorneys, a firefighter and the owner of a growing restaurant chain, observers say.
“The number of serious, organized candidates is clearly different this year,” said Mike Zucchet, a former councilman and leader of the largest city labor union. “It’s previously been rare to see a four-way or five-way contest where you could make a good viability argument for any of the candidates.”
Increasing council salaries from $75,000 per year to $150,000 per year is attracting high-caliber candidates who previously chose not to run because it would have required a steep pay cut, said longtime political consultant Tom Shepard.
“The salaries are still not at a point where someone is going to be able to replace their private sector income with a council salary,” Shepard said. “For many people the very low salary was a disincentive to even consider it, and now I think people who might otherwise not are coming to the conclusion that it’s a sacrifice that could be accommodated for four years or even eight years.”
Advertisement
An example is Chris Olsen, who receives an annual salary of $106,000 working for the city’s Independent Budget Analyst. Olsen is running for the District 3 council seat in 2020.
“I’m certainly not running for the money, but I really wouldn’t have been able to run if I would have had to take a pay cut to do so,” Olsen said. “Not everybody has the liberty of being independently wealthy or being established enough to have a lot of savings.”
The doubled salaries have also attracted five attorneys as candidates: Will Moore in District 1, Joe Leventhal and Marni von Wilpert in District 5, and Raul Campillo and Monty McIntyre in District 7.
Until Councilwoman Monica Montgomery was elected last November to represent District 4, there had not been any attorneys on the council since Scott Peters left in 2008 because of term limits.
Advertisement
Additional candidates who likely would have taken a pay cut before the council salaries doubled include firefighter Aaron Brennan, a candidate in District 1, and Noli Zosa, a District 7 candidate who owns the Dirty Birds restaurant chain.
Olsen, 38, said the higher salaries have also encouraged younger people to run for council.
“I think this has encouraged a lot of young people, particularly young professionals, to throw their hat in the ring and try to contribute their talents to the city,” Olsen said. “We are drawing in candidates that aren’t just retired folks or people who can rely on a family member or spouse to support them.”
Bob Ottilie, a local attorney who spearheaded the ballot measure that doubled the salaries, said he has been surprised but gratified by the early impact.
“The goal was not to pay elected officials more; it was to make it possible for a wider cross section of our community to serve,” he said. “The anticipation was that we’d attract individuals who had a higher level of success, either in the private sector, the public sector or the nonprofit sector.”
Ottilie said the true test will be down the road, when it becomes apparent whether higher-paid council members with more successful backgrounds do a better job running the city.
Jack McGrory, who served as the city’s top management official in the 1990s, said he thinks there will be a difference.
“You’re going to get better quality with better pay,” he said. “That’s just the way the marketplace works.”
Advertisement
McGrory thinks it’s justified.
“They’re voting on budgets of $3 billion — they’re like members of the board of directors of a major corporation,” he said. “If you make the pay more reasonable so a council member can support a family, you’re going to draw a more diverse group of people who are more qualified.”
While the pay hikes will cost the city about $800,000 per year when they kick in fully in 2022, that’s far less than 1 percent of the city’s annual budget of roughly $3.3 billion.
“It’s absolutely worth it,” Zucchet said. “It’s penny wise and pound foolish to save $75,000 here on salary when you could be saving hundreds of millions of dollars with more competent stewardship of the city.”
Ottilie and McGrory both expressed frustration that previous councils repeatedly chose not to vote themselves raises or even put the issue on the ballot, primarily because they feared political backlash.
As a result, council members in San Diego haven’t had a pay raise since 2003. During that time, their pay has fallen behind most other cities of similar size in the nation.
But that will change soon.
More than 78 percent of voters last November approved Measure L, which will increase annual council salaries from $75,000 to about $120,000 in 2020 and about $150,000 in 2022.
Advertisement
In addition, Measure L tied the salaries to those of Superior Court judges, so council members will receive the same incremental raises each year that judges get based on inflation.
The measure also doubled the annual pay for San Diego mayor from $100,000 to about $200,000, with annual increases also tied to the salaries of Superior Court judges.
Ottilie said he wasn’t surprised when voters easily approved Measure L.
“We were always comfortable that if we could get it on the ballot, the community knew what we were doing,” he said.
The measure had other selling points. It eliminated the $9,600-per-year car allowances for council members, prohibited the council and mayor from lobbying city officials for two years after leaving office, and eliminated free use of city-controlled luxury boxes at Petco Park or the city’s stadium in Mission Valley.
Zucchet said the doubled salaries attracting attorneys as candidates could be a good thing for the city and its taxpayers.
Council members must read contracts, make policies and understand proposals to make nuanced changes to city laws and codes, he said.
But the biggest reason would likely be analyzing threatened and ongoing litigation — understanding when the city should settle or fight a case.
“Half of what the council does of substance is in closed session,” Zucchet said. “Navigating that is the job of the city attorney, but it really helps to have policy makers with legal backgrounds.”
Shepard said the broadened candidate pool also is making the political races for council more robust.
“The level of debate is a lot better — better informed and more thoughtful — and I think that’s better for voters,” he said.
Read Again https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/san-diego/story/2019-09-13/doubled-salaries-for-san-diego-council-is-drawing-higher-caliber-candidates-observers-sayBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Doubled salaries for San Diego council is drawing higher-caliber candidates, observers say - The San Diego Union-Tribune"
Post a Comment