Santa Clara Assessor, Sheriff and DA get raises

Supervisors gave the county’s elected assessor, district attorney and sheriff their first raise since 2015, after hearing complaints their salaries lag behind the people who work below them.

SAN JOSE —  While employees and top executives at Santa Clara County receive routine raises, the county’s elected assessor, district attorney and sheriff haven’t received a raise since 2015, and say their salaries lag behind compared to people who work below them.

“I’d like to say right up front that I’m adequately compensated – I’m not crying poverty,” said longtime county Assessor Larry Stone, making an impassioned plea to supervisors. “I am not however, fairly compensated.”

For all three positions, as long as their salaries rank in the top three among their elected peers statewide, a raise is not warranted, according to county policy.

While county supervisors, department heads and other top executives at the county have all received raises in the past three years, Stone said despite being elected to run a department that generates significant tax revenue for the county, his earnings are “equivalent to a deputy or assistant department head or less.”

“My compensation is frozen at number three…there’s no path for me to move up,” said Stone. “Effectively, the policy puts my compensation on a permanent, downward trend.”

That changed Tuesday, when county supervisors voted to give all three elected officials immediate raises, 6.69 percent for Stone and 3.69 percent for Sheriff Laurie Smith and District Attorney Jeff Rosen, and to tie future raises to the same process that governs supervisors’ salaries.

Over the last six years, county executives have received an average 3.4 percent raise, mid-management have received an average 3.9 percent raise, and other employee groups have received 2.5 to 3 percent average raises.

The average raise over the same period is 3.9 percent for the assessor, 3.6 percent for the district attorney, and 3.8 percent for the sheriff, according to a county staff report.

Stone, Smith and Rosen last received salary increases in 2015, which that year were higher than normal to offset changes requiring they contribute more to their public pensions.

Since then, Stone has been paid a salary of $230,231 a year and taken home about $72,000 in benefits, bringing his total compensation to $307,983 in 2017, according to the website Transparent California.

Smith has received a $289,197 salary and about $132,245 in benefits in 2017, according to Transparent California, bringing her total compensation that year to $421,443.

Rosen’s salary for that same period was $343,760 and he received $105,355 in benefits in 2017, bringing home $454,082 in 2017.

Smith, who did not appear at the board meeting, didn’t directly address her own salary in a memo to the board but included a graph showing a three percent gap, or $8,600, between the maximum salary for her and her undersheriff.

The same graph showed a $36,000 gap between the DA and the next position below him, and a $26,800 gap between the assessor and assistant assessor.

“Salaries should reflect the chain of command and increased responsibility for higher job classifications,” Smith wrote in the memo.

Raises for Santa Clara County supervisors are currently linked to the same process used by the Judicial Council of California to calculate salary increases for state judges. If the average wage increase for state workers is three percent, state judges also get a three percent raise.

A county ordinance stipulates supervisors will receive an annual salary that is 80 percent of the annual salary of state superior court judges.

The board, however, has control over salary increases for their three elected peers.

Rosen, in his own memo, said tying raises to the Judicial Council would remove the board from that decision-making process and better take into account cost of living increases. The “top three” policy, he wrote, effectively places “the decision about salary changes for elected officials with other counties.”

Supervisor Mike Wasserman made a motion to grant immediate raises and, going forward, tie future raises for the three elected officials to the Judicial Council process.

“I think they are due a raise, and if there are three votes, we give them that raise was soon as the law allows,” said Wasserman, explaining his motion to grant the raises as soon as legally allowed. “If the judges don’t give themselves a raise for a couple of years…then it would be six years since they receive a raise.”

Wasserman said he proposed a 3 percent higher increase for the assessor after comparing Stone’s salary to other assessors statewide.

“I saw more disparity between our assessor and his peers, than I saw between our DA and Sheriff,” said Wasserman. “It’s a little bit of a realignment.”

The vote was 3-2 to approve the raises, with supervisors Joe Simitian and Dave Cortese voting against the motion, supporting the action to tie raises to the Judicial Council process, but preferring not to grant the immediate salary increases.

The board still needs to vote two more times to approve the change, which would allow the raises to take effect May 23.

Simitian said while the vote takes the decision out of supervisors’ hands for now, the board still has power over raises for those three elected officials.

Contact Thy Vo at 408-200-1055 or tvo@bayareanewsgroup.com.