Executive Pay

By Memo Morantes

For comparison purposes, the County Manager of San Mateo County can make $257,358.40. The Governor of California can make $173,987 (as of Oct. 2010)(1). The population of San Mateo County is roughly 750,000 residents. The population of California is roughly 38 million residents. Each County resident pays roughly .34 cents towards the County Manager's salary. In contract, each Californian pays roughly ½ of a penny! Sure we're only talking about change. However, statistically, that means that San Mateo County residents pay 68 times more for their County Manager than for their Governor. And what's even worse, the County Manager's salary kept increasing, stayed the same or slightly declined over the last few years when the Governor's income has decreased considerably! In 2000, the California Governor's income was roughly $175,000(1). That means that Governor Davis in 2000 was making more than our current Governor Jerry Brown. And to make matters worse for our own County Manager's position, Governor Brown, like Governor Schwarzenegger, refuses to collect his salary.

Now I'm not asking for our County Manager to forgo his salary, though one could argue the current County Manager could afford to do so given his hefty County retirement at roughly $133,000 per year (2). What I'm asking is for the County to cut back this exorbitant cost to the head of the County and bring the salary more in line with the rest of the hardworking employees for the County.

And this isn't a new trend for San Mateo County. It was documented that, even in 2009, San Mateo County had one of the highest paid salaries for County Managers throughout California. At that time, our County Manager was paid more than the County Managers of counties with million plus populations like Riverside County, Orange County, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara County(2).

While our County's unions and bargaining units continue to negotiate in good faith with keeping salaries and benefits in check through compromise and sacrifice, it's time for our County's CEO to lead by example and not act like a Fortune 500 CEO.

(1) http://www.ehow.com/info_7855866_much-money-governor-make.html

(2) http://belmont-ca.patch.com/articles/county-manager-salaries