4% PAY HIKES WILL ROB L.A. OF SERVICES.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON Local View

I didn't think we'd make it, but we survived 2002. Good riddance, I say. This year has got to be better. Well, maybe. Three months after our last election, we're having another one, on Tuesday, March 4, and half the City Council is up for grabs this time.

If you wish to vote in this election, you have to register by Feb. 18, four days after Valentines Day. I tell you this a month in advance because what happens in this next month will decide how important your vote will become in March. The explanation has some numbers in it but hold on, I think it's worth the trip.

During the 1990s, when the economy was growing at about 10 percent per year, instead of investing the revenue windfall in one-time costs, the City Council approved the ongoing expense of generous pay raises for city employees - 90 percent of all income growth from the past six years went to raises - so that today the average city worker makes $54,000 per year, with parallel pension benefit commitments into the distant future. To quote Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka, the city's salary structure now represents a ``structural defect'' in the city's budget.

How generous were those raises? If they had been equal to merely double the rate of inflation, Los Angeles would today have a $150 million surplus - which might have come in handy when attempting to keep pace with our 15 percent growth in population over the past 11 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But we don't have that surplus, and services in this city have not kept pace with our population growth.

And it only gets worse. Every day, L.A. spends more on pension benefits to past employees than it does in salaries to current employees. Translating those increases from the past six years into pension benefits of 60 percent to 80 percent of the highest quarterly salaries - and today's employees retire at 65 and live into their 80s - we may not be able to replace our departing workers.

As an example: The authorized strength level of the Los Angeles Police Department has not been increased since Mayor Richard Riordon's first term 10 years ago. The new chief says we need more cops, but the City Council says we can't afford them.

Fewer employees (per population) means fewer services. Fewer services means decreasing property values, causing decreasing revenues, requiring cuts in employees and services, which decrease property values, which reduces revenues, which causes further reductions in services, etc, etc., et cetera.

With the Bush recession hanging on like a bad cold, we're going to have to seek an at-least temporary freeze in salaries and adjustments in the pension plans for new employees, or future retirees might open their envelopes to find not a check but an IOU. It's a lot to ask of people whom we depend upon, (the LAPD contracts are up this year), and it requires they believe they have been treated fairly.

But just last month - in a secret ballot, of course - the City Council preliminarily granted a 4 percent pay raise to all nonunion city employees, (just to keep pace with inflation, again), evidently not seeing any difference between granting the lowest-paid employee a 4 percent bump in his $40,000 a year pay (a $1,600-a-year increase), and giving the same percentage bump to Ron Deaton, chief legislative analyst for the City Council, who was already making $252,000 a year; his 4 percent bump becomes a $34,000-a-year raise. Not bad for a guy who was already making $120,000 a year more than his counterpart in New York City.

The top 15 managers of L.A.'s bureaucracy will now be making more than $200,000 a year. It's almost as if the council is using the folks making $40,000 to disguise this massive gift for the top managers. But raising their pay has neither increased nor improved services in this city. Nor will it.

We need more cops, not better-paid supervisors. We need more firemen and -women on the trucks, not higher-paid managers. We need more paramedics and trash collectors and park rangers - these are the people whose work increases property values. And if we're going to ask them to sacrifice, we ought to start at the top, where the loss of a 4 percent increase hurts a lot less.

The final vote on that 4 percent raise will be held this month. You should vote against anybody who votes to give that 4 percent to the boys at the top. This year should at least start out differently than last year ended.