Motorcycle Cops Get Lots of $ to wash their bikes

OFF THE WIRE
Let's see..... isn't CA already bankrupt?

Taxpayers get hosed!! Soaked!! Take a bath!!!  You mean to tell me they can't get their bikes washed for less than $5600?? What wasteful spending!!

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/pay-307605-city-special.html

Newport Beach cops get $5,600 to wash their motorcycles
By BRIAN CALLE EDITORIAL Register columnist
bcalle@ocregister.com

It pays well to wash your motorcycle if you are a cop in Newport Beach, where officers who patrol on motor bikes are paid an additional six hours of overtime every month simply for giving their cycles a wash. The special compensation equates to, on average, about a 5 percent pay hike for motorcycle officers, or about $5,600 a year in additional monies, according to an analysis of city documents and interviews with key city staff.

As alarming as that may seem, this is only one example of special pay that inflates salaries and is often hidden from public view because of the stealth nature of negotiations.

The sweet deal is part of the contract negotiated between the police union and the city – yet another creative example of public employee pay abuses at taxpayer expense.

Here's how the payout is described in a 2010-2011 memorandum of understanding between the city of Newport Beach and the Newport Beach Police Association: "Assigned Motor Officers are responsible for keeping the motorcycle assigned to him/her cleaned and polished at all times. This work shall be performed outside of the regularly scheduled work hours; and compensated at the rate of six (6) additional hours overtime per month (six (6) hours at time and one half equals 9 hours compensation)."

One might assume that keeping equipment clean should be part of basic job functions, but in the world of public employees, where seemingly everything is negotiable, that is not the case.

Getting to the bottom of exactly the amount of money each motor officer is paid for washing his/her bike was problematic because the city only provided a broad look at motor officer salary information instead of specifics in salary, overtime and special pay for each of the eight motor officers and the one motor sergeant. Newport Beach ought to have this information at its fingertips and accessible online.

Nevertheless, if you take the average annual pay of a police officer in the traffic division at $109,139, then divide it by 2,080 work hours in a year, the hourly rate is $52. So overtime (related to cleaning motorcycles) would be $468 a month or $5,616 a year. That's the equivalent of a 5.1 percent pay raise. There are a number of categories of special pay including: being bilingual, having a master's degree, a commercial drivers license, fire mechanic certification, etc. (These special pays begin to add up.)

Newport Beach Police Chief Jay Johnson said that the way we calculated these figures would get us to "just about" the right number. He noted that all special pay is included in the city's annual pay documents that I used to do the calculations.

It would seem more prudent for the city to spend $20 bucks a week to have the cycles professionally wiped down instead of spending $468 or more a month in compensation. Or just require officers to keep their bikes clean as part of the job, like other law enforcement agencies do, such as the Orange County Sheriff. I called Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Wayne Howard to ask him if sheriff's deputies receive the same type of payout for motorcycle washing and he said no. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Are deputies paid overtime or at all to wash their motorcycles?
Deputy Howard: No. It doesn't take much to clean the bikes. Officers are responsible for keeping them clean.
Me: So they do not get paid anything additional for that?
Deputy Howard: No.
Me: So there is no service that washes the bike or anything like that?
Deputy Howard: It is not needed; the bikes just need a quick wipe down.

OK, so we know that Newport Beach is in a kind of "red zone" of pay practices. Pull over, buddy. Newport Beach Police Chief Johnson defends the special payouts as "maintenance" though he conceded in our phone interview that most of the technical maintenance on the bikes is performed by specialists. "Technically," he said, the pay is for "washing and keeping the bikes clean." But he also contends that specialty pay for motor officers, given the hazards of the job, is a common practice among cities, even the last city he worked for, Long Beach. And, in neighboring Huntington Beach, motor officers get a 5 percent pay bump for what is termed in its memo of understanding as "hazardous pay," but keeping the bike clean is an on-duty task, except if the officer asks for overtime in advance.

I'm not really asking everyone be wildly outraged over $500 bucks a month or condemn all police officers, I'm suggesting the outrage should really be focused on these deals, usually negotiated out of view of the public. These types of clandestine compensation agreements have great significance because they are ways to bolster pay and pension benefits without showing an outright pay raise for public employees. This special pay compensation category involves any number of things and special pay can be accumulated, meaning you could get a pay bump for washing motorcycles, a master's degree and being bilingual (and more). The more special pay employees qualify for, the more money they pocket and the more they can potentially earn in retirement pension benefits.

Special pay, like overtime wages for washing police motorcycles, sets a dangerous precedent because it buries raises and other payouts within contracts. It's a political ruse; a charade. It allows politicians to award additional taxpayer dollars without having to say they gave a salary "raise" to workers – something that usually doesn't go over well with voters, especially in turbulent economic times. On the flip side, unions are able to claim they have sacrificed and have not been awarded raises, giving them leverage to argue for raises at a later date. They can make the publicly persuasive plea, "we haven't had a raise in (fill in the blank) years." And, they'd be right, up to a point, Lord Copper, as Evelyn Waugh would say.

Another danger: There is a ratchet effect to such types of compensation. For example, local municipalities do not usually use comparisons to the private sector when setting salary ranges or compensation packages; they use comparisons with other municipalities to justify levels of compensation, and often times the same lawyers negotiate union contracts from city-to-city. "Part of the problem is that when one city gives a benefit, negotiators try to get the exact benefit in another city, using it as leverage or as justification for the new pay," Newport Beach councilwoman Leslie Daigle told me.

It is frustrating to uncover new wasteful expenditures of taxpayer monies, but with every new discovery of public employee compensation shenanigans, voters become more aware and rightfully outraged. In theory, this will pressure elected officials to be more accountable and make more fiscally responsible expenditures.

Newport Beach police officers, motorcycle officers included, are already well compensated. Many of them are budgeted to make over $175,000 a year in total compensation and have lavish pension benefits that promise 90 percent of salary after 30 years of work, allowing for retirement at as early as age 50. And they can take home even more in overtime pay. There is no need to further game the system with gimmicks like pay for washing motorcycles.

Until such abuses are addressed – by reviews, by sunshine, by open negotiations -- taxpayers will continue to be surprised, and continue to take a bath.