Daily News Editorial: Reward system for city workers adds up to $150 million and needs to be scrutinized along with layoffs, furloughs

L.A. CITY BONUSES

Los Angeles city leaders are currently in negotiations with workers, and the talk is all about concessions to avoid furloughs and layoffs. Some unions have already agreed to pay more for health care or for retirement costs. Others are still wrangling with the mayor, City Council and CAO representatives.

And during these talks, everything should be on the table and open for discussion - and that includes the millions of dollars in bonuses that have become a permanent, but rarely mentioned, fixture on the city's books.

As a Daily News investigation on today's front page shows, the city of Los Angeles spends about $150 million a year on pay classified as a bonus for one thing or the other. Yet, it's money that's never talked about during discussions about employee pay.

Some city bonuses are relatively modest - just a few hundred dollars - but some employees can boost their annual salary by as much as 25 percent.

Most people think of a bonus as a little extra something at the holidays or the end of a fiscal year as a thank-you from a boss to celebrate a job well done or a particularly lucrative year.

That's not how it works in the city, where bonuses are written into employee contracts. They aren't one-time, good-for-you boosts, but entitlements that hamstring the treasury during financial shortfalls such as the one that has shut down libraries on Mondays and reduced other city services.

Many of these bonuses started out as

needed incentives to find employees willing and able to do special jobs in a civil service system that doesn't allow much flexibility. But some bonuses, as the story points out, were created as sneaky ways to give raises without unwanted attention from the public or other employee bargaining units.

Case in point are the bonuses to police and fire personnel for basic job requirements. Police get bonus pay for having POST certification and firefighters get bonuses for being certified emergency medical technicians - both required for the job. It's like giving a lawyer a bonus for passing the state bar exam, or a doctor a bonus for attending medical school.

Whatever the original intent, the vast system of bonuses has evolved into a hidden entitlement that the city can ill afford. In many cases, bonuses are based on a percentage of base pay. When pay goes up, so do the bonuses. And many are also pensionable, pushing up the amount of post-retirement pay that an employee can expect.

The city is currently in contract negotiations with both the fire and police unions. And talk of compensation must include bonuses. To be sure, it's going to be a tough sell to employees who now consider this their base pay.

One place to start is by negotiating flat rate bonuses - that is bonuses that don't increase with the level of pay. That way there's no loss of pay, but just less down the line.

The other is to halt all but essential bonuses for new hires. It's absurd to keep paying extras we can't afford that are basic requirements for certain jobs.

The budget crisis has shone much needed sunlight on to public employee compensation. When bonuses cost taxpayers $150 million a year, they are too big an expense to be left in the dark.

Melissa Howard Daisy Fuentes Melissa Sagemiller Eva Green Dominique Swain