Just two months ago, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper succeeded in persuading a reluctant City Council to give his top appointees healthy pay raises of 4.55 percent or more, but now the administration is slashing the city’s 2009 budget by $56 million and asking police officers, firefighters and sheriff’s deputies to take pay cuts.
Council member Michael Hancock, said Friday that he wouldn’t have voted for the pay raises if he had known then what he knows now.
He said the mayor and his staff didn’t tell him that tough choices were coming up.
“All I can do is accept what they told me,” Hancock. “At the time they brought in those raises, they were not aware of the level of the slowdown and the decline in the sales-tax revenue that we are experiencing at this time.”
Now the mayor is proposing a series of budget cuts to close next year’s projected $59 million gap, including delaying equipment purchases, keeping merit pay increases next year at 2.25 percent for career service employees and mayoral appointees, reducing police pay, dipping into reserves and temporarily suspending a bonus pay plan that rewards performance. The mayor also is seeking wage concessions from the unions representing employees in the safety department, which takes up half of the city’s budget.
The mayor’s Cabinet pay raises went to the City Council on Sept. 12 and stalled while the council debated whether to take a stance on a series of controversial ballot initiatives scheduled for the November ballot. The council granted final approval for the raises in late October.
During the debate, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped from about 10,500 to 8,175 as a global credit crisis seized world markets.
Kelly Brough, the mayor’s chief of staff, said in one meeting with council members in October that the pay raises were planned before the administration knew the extent of the economic downturn.
“Our decisions were made well before we were in the situation we face today,” she said in a meeting with several council members Oct. 14.
The Federal Reserve’s beige book look at economic conditions issued Sept. 3 provided some warnings and described business conditions as “weak,” “soft” and “subdued,” but the Fed had not raised any alarms.
Five of the mayor’s appointees have received raises of 4.55 percent: City Attorney David Fine to $141,284, environmental health manager Nancy Severson to $120,900, public works manager Bill Vidal to $172,614, finance director Claude Pumilia to $147,706 and community planning director Peter Park to $133,562.
Two others saw their salaries jump by 6.9 percent: Safety Manager Al LaCabe to $152,906 annually and the manager of excise and licenses, Awilda Marquez, to $97,734. One Cabinet officer, Kevin Patterson, the new parks and recreation manager, saw an 18 percent salary increase, up to $130,546 for next year. Of that amount, 6.9 percent stemmed from his exceptional rating when he was director of general services. The remainder stemmed from a promotional raise for his new position.
Brough said in an interview that none of those city employees are being asked to take pay cuts in 2008, even as police, firefighters and sheriff’s deputies are expected to take pay cuts next year.
“There is context missing here,” Brough insisted. “These salaries, when you compare them nationally, are very much on the low end for what people receive for these jobs.”
She also stressed that the Cabinet doesn’t participate in the city’s bonus-pay program, which gives extra money for high performance. She added that the full Cabinet took a voluntary furlough day on the day after Thanksgiving, as did many other city employees.
The mayor thanked the council during a meeting in late October for moving forward with the pay raises for his Cabinet. At that time, he said the pay raises amounted to about a total of $90,000, and that a survey conducted by the Denver Career Service Authority had found his Cabinet’s pay lagging behind those of other cities.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
