COUNTY'S PAYDAY GIVEAWAY 15.5% DEAL EXTENDS TO NONUNION WORKERS.

Byline: TROY ANDERSON Staff Writer

Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors has expanded a lucrative raise and benefits deal for union workers to include thousands of additional nonunion employees, according to details released Friday.

The deal -- which includes a three-year, 15.5 percent pay raise and extras such as fully funded health benefits -- initially was struck last month for more than 50,000 members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 660.

It was recently expanded to include 12,000 nonunion employees -- managers, executive secretaries, doctors and most of the supervisors' staffers, said Bart Diener, assistant general manager of the SEIU.

The deal is expected to cost an extra $341 million in 2007-08.

But the plan already has begun to draw sharp warnings that it exceeds salary-inflation assumptions and could swell the county's already massive pension debts.

``It seems to me that it is our hope this deal gets rejected in light of its exorbitant cost,'' said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. ``How is the county planning to pay for this?

``The economy and housing market is beginning to cool down and their own advisers are suggesting this will have a negative impact ... It would seem to me to be extraordinarily irresponsible for the Board of Supervisors to approve this magnitude of pay and benefit increases.''

County officials, however, defended the deal, noting that the county's budget has grown from $18 billion in 2004-05 to $20.9 billion this year, largely because of rising property tax revenues and the recent passage of a measure that prevents the state from raiding local coffers.

``We are confident the county can afford these agreements,'' Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said. ``We have around $300 million in a capital surplus. And property tax revenues are still going up, although we expect them to be less than they were.

``We have forecasted a modest growth in the out years of 4 (percent) to 5 percent. This year, it's been growing at 11.9 percent.''

Agreement hailed

The county and the SEIU reached the tentative agreement last month, hailing it as key to helping the county retain and hire more nurses and help lift workers who now qualify for food stamps out of poverty.

Diener noted that SEIU members and nonunion workers only received 5 percent in raises in the past three years.

``In recent years, the county has experienced a growing inability to hire qualified employees in many classifications, from law enforcement to health care,'' Diener said. ``This agreement will help the county address that problem, which will result in better services for the public.''

But in a letter to the supervisors, the county's pension actuary advised that the proposed salary increases exceed the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association's assumptions and ``will result in an increase in actuarial liability.''

The warning was the first that Buck Consultants has made in the two years since a judge ordered government agencies to include a pension actuary's advice on the fiscal impact of salary and benefit increases.

Buck Consultants tempered its warning, however, noting that the salary increases given to the SEIU and other employees in the past three years somewhat offset the proposed adjustments.

``The bottom line is the actuarial salary assumptions on LACERA have been down for the last three years and just because the assumption is going to be higher for three years, that balances out,'' said David Sommers, spokesman for Supervisor Don Knabe.

``The CAO has told us this does not pose a great or significant risk to the county by moving forward on this and the supervisor is confident with the CAO's recommendation.''

Currently, LACERA's $34 billion pension fund has an unfunded liability of $4.9 billion and is 85.8 percent funded.

Officials in cities and counties throughout California have been paying more attention to these long-term debts.

Officials now estimate that government agencies in the state need more than $300 billion to pay for pension and retiree health benefits.

In recent years, state and local officials have sweetened public-pension plans by expanding the list of bonuses that can be considered as income to determine the size of a worker's retirement check.

Currently, county employees are eligible for more than 110 pensionable bonuses.

These pension enhancements have allowed thousands of employees to retire with six-figure incomes -- in many cases, that's more money than they made while working.

``It's transparent pension-spiking and it's offensive to taxpayers who don't have nearly as sweet a deal as public employees and is just another example of how this state is going into bankruptcy,'' Coupal said of the proposed deal.

Vote on Tuesday

The supervisors will vote Tuesday on the package, which also includes an additional 5.5 percent pay increase over two years for workers who have been at the top of their salary range for at least one year.

It also calls for 10 percent increases per year in the county's contribution to employee health and dental plans.

And in an effort to address an estimated $9.4 billion county retiree health deficit, the contract calls for a joint labor/management retiree health committee to look at ways to control costs.

Jim Adams, chief of the CAO's Employee Relations Division, said the county decided to provide fully paid health benefits because health care costs have risen so sharply in recent years.

``This hit the lower-paid employees pretty furiously,'' Adams said.

He said the addition of nonunion workers to the deal was simply a matter of timing and that nonunion employees typically get the same deal as the SEIU.

``What is unusual this time around is we have done it en masse,'' Adams said. ``In the past, bargaining units kind of trickled in and this time we had a total settlement.''

The plan also includes a range of new benefits including a 5.25 percent ``manpower shortage range'' bonus for clerks and librarians, a $1-an-hour weekend bonus and a 5.5 percent bonus for district attorney, public defender and alternate public defender employees who work in the Antelope Valley and reside more than 30 miles from the courthouses where they work.

Envious that firefighters and sheriff's employees get longevity bonuses that periodically boost employees' salaries and their pensionable incomes as they near retirement, social workers also sought longevity bonuses -- which now total up to 6 percent.

And after firefighters and lifeguards recently negotiated a 3 percent ``fitness for life'' bonus, their nonunion management counterparts in the Fire Department and Department of Parks and Recreation clamored for the bonus, too.

``It's an effort to try to develop some healthy patterns and reward people for staying healthy and getting their checkups,'' Adams said. ``When we settled the lifeguard contract last spring that started it, and the managers piggybacked onto that.''

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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