Gov't Job$

Little Day City - a borough that borders San Francisco to the south - is providing an inadvertent glimpse into the sky high salaries that bureaucrats earn in CA by cutting the salary of its City Clerk in half, down from $109,000. That's right, $109,000: Daly Drubbing

Pay cut or payback? That's the question being asked in Daly City after City Clerk Annette Hipona had her salary cut in half - down to $52,988 a year from $109,000.

The City Council voted to slash Hipona's salary barely two months after she was sworn into office.

"The cut was significant," said Councilman Mike Guingona, "but anyone that came in with expectation that the pay was going to be $109,000 was somewhat deluded."

Unfortunately, they are not cutting her salary out of some sort of flinty eyed concern for the bottom line. It's pure payback. The Clerk is an obnoxious gadfly, and the City Fathers are tired of listening to her belly aching about their expenditures. And, it turns out she has a lot to complain about:

City payroll records, however, show more than 300 of the city's 500 or so workers have been earning in excess of $100,000 annually - including City Manager Patricia Martel, who earns $301,000.

$301,000? To be city manager for Daly City?! It's not much of a city. It has a population of little over 100,000, and is mostly known as the place where you go to buy a car or visit Target. No way being city manager is worth over $300,000. Vallejo, as I recall, also paid its city manager over $300,000. It is now the first municipality in CA to declare bankruptcy. But, I'm sure that's just a crazy coincidence.

The rest of the bureaucracy is no better. 60% of Daly City's city employees are making over $100,000. I'm sure they're all fine people who wake up bright and early every day, ready to work their tails off for the greater glory of Daly City (smirk). But this is pure featherbedding, and it's endemic throughout the state. There's no way CA will be able to solve its budget problems until these sorts of high salary patronage jobs are done away with, but you can't do it without a wailing chorus crying over "cuts in essential services."

Simply entering into "negotiations" of nibbling around the edges won't accomplish anything when there are hundreds of thousands of people making upper-middle class incomes. But doing nothing will put you in the same boat as Vallejo - bankrupt and cutting anyway. Or, people could do something crazy like vote, but that is almost never an option.