Thousands on L.A.'s payroll earning more than $100,000

As Los Angeles grapples with its largest budget deficit in history, lucrative compensation packages for thousands of city workers are driving much of the gap, and there's little end in sight.

[Tom]

>> "I don't think we could have done better, not if we wanted to keep (employees) productive >> and motivated, not if we wanted to keep the relationship with the coalition," Sisson said.

productive and motivated union employees ???... That's a good laugh. Karen Sisson is obviously snorting some good cocaine or shooting up heroin before her interviews. but then Los Angeles deserves to be held at metaphorical gunpoint by public unions and spineless politicians and the City Council who depended on the union backing and money to put them in power at the expense of the ordinary people living in the city.

[Carolyn Lee]

As a City employee, I feel it's not that the City salaries are to high, it's the fact that the City has too many employees who don't do anything. I supervised several employees who watched TV the majority of the time because there was not enough work and their positions were in the budget. The supervisors have to use the money or lose it, so they hire more employees then they need.

The City should offer employees who would like to retire early a package plan, that would save a great deal of money. Also, the City can offer flex time, instead of 40 hours per week, willing employees can work 32 hours per week.

[Katie J]

Lay off the whole damn city...starting with the mayor and council; they're not worth one-tenth of what we pay them. Villaraigosa has to be the dumbest elected official who ignored warnings since George Bush. Both deserve early retirement.

[USA]

Could someone explain why the Airport police department has fourteen lieutenants earning over 100K a year? Other than LAX and Van Nuys airport, how many do we need?

[Chunkdog]

"I had a dozen (employees) making over $100,000 in the CRA and I didn't know what they did."
This is obviously a testimony to the waste in L.A., either by the workers or by the supervisor.

[Recall Villar]

And how many illegals are filling those jobs...I heard street sweepers make $75K/year!

If Villar did not see the downturn coming, he's got to be the dumbest person on earth; and if he DID see it coming, he wouldn't have done anything about it anyway!(Does he even know how to read? We know he doesn't know how to speak!)

Why can't Villar rescind the wage hikes???

The City Council is the biggest rip off of all...they should be part-timers and their salaries should be cut by 75%! They are worthless and dangerous!

[Charles]

Workers in Los Angeles, city workers and those hired by the city, will __never__ have their salaries reduced. We all know that's a dream. Fee hikes, new taxes? Sure, they're in the pipeline. A reduction in salaries (more than 21,000 city workers take home $70,000 or more a year and more than 6,000 take home more than $100,000) will never happen. Only if we get some city administrators with gonads will that ever come close to happening. Mayor Tony Villar is happy to tax us into oblivion. What a joke he is and the rest of the City Council.

[Thorguy]

So they say we need more cops? In the article of furloughs helping close gap, it states that the LAPD led the city by taking over $33,000 in voluntary furlough days or an annual rate of over $800,000. If they can afford to take so much time off, why do we need more? How about making the heroes work more days per week per person. This city is corrupt and needs an overhaul from top to bottom.

[City Employee Waste]

"Deputy Mayor Robert "Bud" Ovrom - who took a nearly $100,000 pay cut to move from head of the Community Redevelopment Agency to oversee economic development for the mayor at an annual salary of $138,622 - said top city managers in some cases could make more in the private sector."

If I'm not mistaken, "Bud" (typical of government managers to take friendly sounding names so the unions will like them as "regular" guys) was the city manager of Burbank for several years and was able to afford a cut in pay in LA because he's on a lifetime state retirement plan that is on par with a good chunk of his salary in Burbank. LA is on a different plan so he's setting himself up for another lucrative retirement. He surely didn't take a pay cut because he's such a "buddy" to the people. I also understand that he's one of the biggest political prostitutes in Southern CA, which is no wonder he's friendly with Villaraigosa, and that he is a big part of the problem with how unions have taken over the city of Burbank where salaries for bureaucrats are on par with Los Angeles.

This problem with government employee salaries exceeding those in the private sector isn't limited to LA, it's a problem with most So Cal cities. The unions, weak managers, and politicians beholden to the unions all walk hand in hand and the taxpayers get soaked in the process.

So now these managers, unions and politicians have finally painted themselves into a corner with their greed and corruption. They thought that they could rob the taxpayers forever with endless new taxes and tax hikes and the party would never end. But it's a new age. The public is better informed via the Web and investigative reports like this by the Daily News. The public seems to have finallye awakened and realized that the union propaganda in the television with the crying firemen and teachers is full of lies and distortions. And the public is refusing to give up one dime more of their wages to governments that aren't doing anything but paying off their employees.

[Valleymom]

Yes, you morons...let's get rid of the middle class. Good god, have you checked the cost of living in Los Angeles lately? Gas is over $4.00 a gallon, you can't rent a shack here for less then $1200 a month, then of course, you get to pay thousands of dollars each year for earthquake insurance, car insurance, health insurance and homeowners insurance. Oh, and if you want to send your kids to college...well, plan on forking out $8-$10,000.00 per kid. Yeah, that's right, we're paying those damn city workers too much. PLEASE.

[Reality Check]

When the most recent union hikes for DWP and other unions (their union head controls the DWP, not the other way around), like service workers (that belligerent Maria Elena Durazo and others), went through just as this paper and others were talking about the budget crisis, the best Garcetti, Zine and the city could do was to get them to agree to reduce their raises if the city really needed them to. Surprise, they're now refusing to as everyone sane knew they would -- they outright lied, to get their deal.

All new hires should NOT get lifetime pernsions anymore, that's even bigger waste than salaries. The min. they have to work to get it is ridiculous, no other private sector has that, nor even many cities anymore. Hahn, Alarcon and those liberal wackos who cry over RAISING wages for city workers to double min. wage instead of looking at the budget crisis are unfit to manage our money; problem is, I don't know who IS. Sisson works for the city as an employee, can't advise or exercise power over spending, just tell us about it after the fact. Of course, she's only been here a year and is quitting in the summer, from the stress no doubt.

We need an Economic Advisor whose job it is to forecast trends, like private sectors have and wall street does, someone qualified and who'll take responsibility. All we have now is special interests sucking up money from politicians whose hands are tied to counter them.

[SReynolds]

Don't really care, I sold my business and I'm heading out of town :). You guys can deal with it.

[City Employee Waste]

Carolyn Lee wrote:

As a City employee, I feel it's not that the City salaries are to high, it's the fact that the City has too many employees who don't do anything. I supervised several employees who watched TV the majority of the time because there was not enough work and their positions were in the budget. The supervisors have to use the money or lose it, so they hire more employees then they need.
The City should offer employees who would like to retire early a package plan, that would save a great deal of money. Also, the City can offer flex time, instead of 40 hours per week, willing employees can work 32 hours per week.

Nice try, City Employee Carolyn Lee, you city bureaucrats always look for more handouts when you're supposed to be cutting budgets. I'm sure that you'd love to have hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars handed to you to retire early and that your pals would love to work 32 hours per week while still giving only 2 hours work and getting paid for 40 hours work. All the games that you play calling them "cuts" aren't going to fly. The city doesn't have the funds for it this time around and they'll have to make real cuts, including laying off your colleagues sitting around watching tv all day because "their jobs are in the budget." This city needs to first cancel all of the promised payoffs, err, I mean, pay raises. They then need to void the union contracts layoff all the people and programs who aren't contributing real effort and value to the taxpayers. I'm sure that includes you. They then need to get rid of the Redevelopment Agency and its overpaid real estate agents and thieves. Then, they need to reduce salaries to bring them in line with private sector salaries. Government employees should earn less than private sector counterparts, not more. Then, stop the lawsuit abuse. Then, make the employees work instead of doing union activities. The politicians can then finally begin eliminating and reducing taxes because government costs will finally be reasonable and taxpayers will be getting a fair return on our tax dollars.(Yeah, I know, it sounds like a beautiful dream.)

[Lawrence Ho]

The city nested a lot of lazy worker since I was told by a freind who worked at the DWP that no body does anything and get highly paid.

One can also see city vehicles being user by personnel taking it home everyday at the expense of the tax payer in burning those gas.

[Dead Middle Class]

We need to fire all these overpaid City workers and hire people who will work for peanuts...I know Illegal Immigrants! they will do the work dirt cheap.
The last thing California needs is Middle Class jobs.

[Blubberment Rip Off]

Dead Middle Class wrote:

We need to fire all these overpaid City workers and hire people who will work for peanuts...I know Illegal Immigrants! they will do the work dirt cheap.
The last thing California needs is Middle Class jobs.

Don't pretend that you're part of the Middle Class. This story reveals that you earn more than comparable private sector employees. City employees have negotiated themselves into an upper-middle class elite class, but the taxpayers have little to show for it. You're incompetent and corrupt and taxpayers are being ripped off. Just take a look around this city and anyone with an ounce of common sense can see it's been completely mismanaged.

[Look again]

Looks like the engineers are under paid compared to private.

[mickey malone]

"We need to fire all these overpaid City workers and hire people who will work for peanuts...I know Illegal Immigrants! they will do the work dirt cheap.The last thing California needs is Middle Class jobs. "

I know legal citizens who would work for dirt cheap; they are the unemployed, baby boomers and seniors who cant live or keep up with the cost of living.

[stop the hating]

City employees does not get pay enormous amount of money. Show me what job's salary in the city is off base compare to the private sector. I have friends in the private sector making a lot more than many city workers. I know city employees who have lost their life or been injured seriously providing service to the city. You don't hear those things...So, lighten up. Now the politician is another matter. So, stop the hating.

[stop the hating]

City workers are the middle class. what you want is like what wal-mart and other corporations are doing to the community, undercut the middle class and create a new level of class, the treading class. Oh by the way, Walmart and others are private sectors...hire illegals - that is what you all want, right? stop hating.