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Solid waste? 18 percent pay raise for Sanitation District CEO
August 29th, 2008, 6:05 am · 21 Comments · posted by Jennifer Muir
The top administrator of the third largest wastewater agency west of the Mississippi River just got a hefty raise that’s stirring up some contention among the agency’s board members.
Wednesday night the folks over at the Orange County Sanitation District gave their chief exec Jim Ruth a $43,443 pay bump for overseeing an agency that treats enough sink and toilet water to fill Anaheim stadium nearly three times each day.
That’s a 17.6 percent increase from what he has been making (including all the extras, such as benefits and a merit bonus).
And only five board members (unsucessfully) opposed the pay hike. Irvine City Councilwoman Christina Shea was one.
“It’s not the private sector,” Shea said. “I don’t think people should go into public life to make a lot of money … I think it’s gone too far.”
Plus, Shea says, the board discussed giving Ruth another raise in six months.
“He is doing an excellent job — one of the best CEOs I’ve ever overseen,” Shea said. “But if our members are having rate increases and we’re going through a tough economic time, I don’t think it looks good to be awarding a $44,000 (salary) increase.”
Board chairman Doug Davert, a Tustin City Councilman, sees things differently.
Ruth joined the district 31 months ago as an interim CEO, Davert explained, and when he was hired full time more than a year ago, the board never added the benefits other full time employees receive.
This raise will do that, Davert said. And a more accurate way to assess the increase, he added, would be to look at his base pay, which increased his salary some 7.2 percent from $209,880 to $225,000.
The raise also will bring Ruth’s base salary in line with other similar professionals, according to this staff report about the market study and Rice’s accomplishments.
“We’re not trying to be the highest paying, but we need to remain competitive,” Davert said. “Jim has done a phenomenally exceptional job since he’s been there…Nobody can expect Jim to work for less.
To me this is a non-issue.”
Here’s a breakdown of Ruth’s new pay:
*Base pay: $225,000
*Merit raise: $14,692
*Deferred compensation: $20,500
*Health insurance reimbursement: $3,500
(The deal with the health insurance: Ruth has his own, so the Sanitation District is giving him some cash that represents a percentage of what it would have paid if he was enrolled. I know The Register won’t do that for us Watchdogs!)
Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, who also voted against the steep raise, takes particular issue with the “performance bonus,” which, Davert explained is not factored in to base salary and does not have to be given each year.
“I think if an executive is doing an outstanding job, it should be reflected in their salary,” Norby said. “And we should expect them to do a good job. I’ve never supported a one time bonus for the CEO of (the Orange County Transportation Authority), because it turns out we give it to them every single year.”
Good point.
If it’s given every year, why can’t the board just include it in the salary? Clearly, they’re not worried about sticker shock with this pay hike.
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So his real “pay” before taxes is being raised by 7.2%.
Regarding the benefits:
“the board never added the benefits other full time employees receive.”
So let us not focus on the additional pay raise.
Also this is the first pay raise and how does this compare to the market trend for the industry based on same size and operational capacity of similar entities?
How much of the increase reflects normal cost of living?
From other bloggers it appears even the government gave Social Security nearly 3% cost of living last year. Making the pay increase closer to an actual 4%.
Now is 4% merit increase too much?
In order to make that decision we need comparison of other merit increase for the same industry, same size, operational capacity and so forth.
this guy is on high class welfare.
Boy that is a lot of money for just being a turd tender.
Government waste…literally.
Stop Gov’t abuse. This guy is paid too much. When is US and California going to wake up to the RON PAUL revolution in gov’t. We are BROKE and the federal reserve printing more money is not the solution, bring back limited gov’t and personal liberties. Google or Yahoo Ron Paul, he’s fighting for you right now.
So the argument should not be based on a headline that reads, “18% Raise” when the facts were the actual raise that concern most most people is the amount (after taxes) that feeds my family and with 1/2 of that four percent merit (if that) results in only 2%!
Now we can look at the issue that turd executives - (I love the reference) - might get paid too much money. That might actually be a real comparison versus just throwing percentages and figures out.
The 75% median is roughly $105K a year. So based on that figure we should investigate further into Mr. Ruth’s pay as being twice the 75% median.
But then again we can only compare it to actual like entities of the same level of operations.
Again as we have seen a lot in just this week alone these blogs do not reasonable comparisons and seem to just throw numbers on the table to make people responsive with big percentages and numbers and no real comparisons.
And you wonder why people have no trust in government agencies. This is WASTEFUL (no pun intended) spending. Who approved this?
The People the majority of us all voted for to serve on the twenty five member board of directors.
Also remember Jim Roth is the executive of the 3rd Largest Sanitation Entity in the Western United States!
there is plenty of outrage in govt. spending and compensation, but it isn’t necessarily here. there are plenty of important jobs in the management of municipalities that need effective people. if this guy truly is a talented guy doing a great job, nothing it that raise is out of line. it’s probably cheaper than having him walk away for something else. obviously we can’t pay private industry wages, and don’t want people who are looking for that (rather those who truly want to serve) but govt. should take reasonable measures to retain the good employees.
You guys are morons that guy deserves every penny of his raise. Do you have any what we deal with down there, every time someone flushes a toilet in Orange County it comes to the HB San District because all these gay cites like tustin and irvine whine and say things like NIMBY and they have all the space in the world…stupid for not having their own… instead they ship it to us and we charge them lots of money for it. Good more revenue for Huntington. Realize shit is a big business and with the looks of the population increases and illegals coming it will become an even bigger business. Maybe your kids will work their… it’s good money…they are spending close to a billion dollars on that site…open your eyes look at all the construction.
“*Health insurance reimbursement: $3,500″? WHAT? Does anyone else here get a “Health insurance reimbursement” from their employer? He can’t afford to pay his own insurance? I bet every other employee pay at least part of theirs.
You notice how these people seem to cry about paying competative wages, when it means increasing their pay. But when it comes to the person on the production floor they cry about being competative with wages in India, Mexico or China…then keep lower paid workers low.
I don’t know, something does not smell right.
Alan, the majority voted for them to serve on the board, when did we give them the right to vote for their own pay raises? This is what needs to be changed, and NOW!
Go watch the movie IOUSA and see the waste for yourself.
Start by voting out all incumbents. They are all on the same “print your way out of it” gravy train.
johnb,
Only $3,500 for health insurance … must be a discount program.
hmmm.. Is he one of the members on the Board?
Some of you may know that the district recently imposed a $200 per
year local sewer fee on some homeowners. And that was on top of
another $200 per year fee begun a few years ago.
Its easy to see that just the raise Mr Ruth is getting would have paid the fee for more than 200 of these homeowners.
Without focusing on Mr Ruth’s personal situation, it is illuminating to see the salary/benefits of all the District’s job classifications.
I was personally shocked and surprised to learn just how generous the taxpayers are to the district’s employees
Private industry employees should be so privileged.
I would encourage anyone interested to get this data from the
district and review it.
I’m afraid that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that if you
peel back the layers of almost any government agency you can easily see the dangerous darkness lurking inside.
No wonder the public has so little trust in their government, its functions and its fiscal responsibility
This is what happens when government employees vote for their own raises. The raises should be put up to a vote of the people.
Johnb Says:
This is what happens when government employees vote for their own raises.
Again the same question - Is he one of the members on the Board?