The Governator is Making Gray Davis Look Good

As school systems around the state are facing serious budget cuts, layoffs of teachers and the important programs like music, state employee salaries are skyrocketing:

The state of California's payroll is skyrocketing, even as its budget deficit has grown to billions of dollars in recent months.

In Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's first four years, the total bill for state workers' salaries jumped by 37 percent, compared with a 5 percent increase in the preceding four years under then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Chronicle analysis of state payroll records shows.

One month before Schwarzenegger took office in November 2003, just eight state employees earned more than $200,000 a year working in the core state government, which excludes universities and the Legislature. In April of this year, there were nearly a thousand, according to records.

And the number of state employees making six-figure salaries has more than doubled since 2003, to nearly 15,000. Meanwhile, the number of state workers has grown by 26,000 under Schwarzenegger after being cut by Davis, who was recalled from office in the midst of a severe budget crisis.

Some of the pay increases in recent years have been out of Schwarzenegger's control, including previously negotiated pay raises for some employee unions and court-ordered pay hikes for medical workers in the state prison system that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

Also fueling the spurt in payroll growth: salary increases for employees in a few politically powerful labor unions, including the state's prison guards, as well as pay hikes for workers in the upper echelons of state government. Elected members of the Legislature, who will decide in the coming weeks how to resolve the state's $17.2 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, also received increases last year.

"Salaries have only gone one way - up," said Charles Murray, chair of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for the state's top elected officials. Murray, a Republican from San Marino (Los Angeles County), has called for a pay cut for legislators and other elected officers in light of the state's huge deficit.

"If we had control over the janitors, I'd ask them to take a pay cut, too," he said. "The reasoning is very simple: We're in big trouble moneywise."

Legislators, gubernatorial aides and top medical professionals have received pay hikes in the last 12 months. And as the state looks at drastic cuts in many programs, the governor is proposing about $260 million in salary increases for the state's prison guards, whose pay jumped about 34 percent in five years under their previous contract.

The unions and the courts, with the complicity of the government, are going to ruin the state for future generations. We cannot grant unlimited salary hikes to bureaucrats, or even public safety workers like prison guards, while robbing the education system. There is not an unlimited amount of taxpayer largesse available to pay for all these people.