by DCG
Well-paid SF mayor, London Breed.
Get elected as a local mayor of a city with high crime and a homeless crisis and suddenly you are the highest paid mayor in the state? Nice gig if you can get it.
From SF Chronicle: When newly elected Mayor London Breed signed San Francisco’s record $11 billion budget last week, she also ushered in a 3 percent pay bump for all city workers — meaning nearly 800 city executives will be making more than California’s governor.
New payroll figures provided by the city controller’s office show that two dozen San Francisco managers earn a base pay of more than $300,000 — Susan Ehrlich, the physician who heads San Francisco General Hospital, tops the list at $429,000 a year.
Breed, who just months ago drew a $121,448 salary as president of the Board of Supervisors, now earns $335,995 — making her the highest-paid mayor in California. That easily eclipses Gov. Jerry Brown’s $195,806 salary or the $201,680 he’ll be getting starting in December.
Still, Breed is only the eighth highest paid San Francisco official — the new pay raises, for instance, bump up Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly to $359,000 a year and San Francisco International Airport Director Ivar Satero to $341,000.
Police Chief Bill Scott, meanwhile, will now make $332,774 and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White $326,974.
The city’s list of those making more than the governor doesn’t even include about 500 lower-level city workers who, according to city payroll records, made at least $200,000 in 2017 after overtime and other premium pay incentives were added in.
Or the city’s retirement fund chief investment officer, William Coaker Jr., whose chart-topping $545,294 in pay in 2017 was based on commissions.
“It’s not rational,” California Citizens Compensation Commission Chairman Tom Dalzell said of the imbalance between state and city salaries.
Overall, the median pay for most full-time city workers last year was $97,301, with overtime included. The median pay for most full-time executives last year, with overtime, was $148,470.
In all, San Francisco will spend $5 billion on employee salaries and benefits this fiscal year — about 45 percent of the total city budget.
Meanwhile, given the political realities at the state level, Dalzell said it’s unlikely California’s constitutional officers or legislators will see big pay increases anytime soon. That means that for the foreseeable future, the governor will continue to take home considerably less than hundreds of San Francisco police officers, firefighters and city bureaucrats. That group includes three sheriff’s deputies who each took home nearly $350,000 last year, with their overtime alone totaling more than the governor’s salary.
DCG