Nearly 200 LA County Workers Make Over $250K Salary
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — What's in your wallet? Your answer may differ drastically from those employees on the Los Angeles County payroll.
199 county workers earned more than $250,000 in 2009, according to a list of top earners obtained by
the Los Angeles Times, one largely dominated by physicians and other medical personnel, as well as firefighters and a handful of top sheriff's officials.
Some well-known names on the 2009 list belonged to elected officials, The Times reported. But none of the five county supervisors, who make $178,789 a year, were among the county's top earners.
District Attorney Steve Cooley made $345,587 and was at number 25 on the list, and Sheriff Lee Baca made $325,664 to come in at number 38 on the list, The Times reported.
Both Cooley and Baca received a substantial amount of compensation listed as "other earnings," in Cooley's case about $53,000 and in Baca's nearly $47,000.
Number 5 on the list was the county's chief executive, William T. Fujioka, who made $403,140 in 2009, The Times reported.
Four physicians earned more than Fujioka. Elaine Yang made $430,909, Gail Anderson Jr. made $421,648, and John McDonald made $413,807, all at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Christine Holschneider made $423,533 at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.
Overtime pay played a significant role in determining the county's top earners. Less than one-third of the county's highest-paid employees made the list on base salary alone.
Thirty workers made more than $80,000 in overtime. Twenty-two of them work for the county Fire Department, four work for public hospitals, two were psychiatrists for the Mental Health Department, and two were physician specialists for the Sheriff's Department, The Times reported.
Four pilots for the county Fire Department made more in overtime than they did in base salary:
- Charles Moreno earned $153,324 in overtime in addition to a base salary of $140,504
- Brian Novak earned $156,812 in overtime and a base salary of $125,769
- Thomas Short earned $144,862 in overtime and a base salary of $140,504
- Patrick Stefanski earned $137,337 in overtime and a base salary of $127,633
Thomas Tyrrell, a principal deputy county counsel, said many Fire Department members who made the list worked on the Station Fire between Aug. 26 and Oct. 16, 2009. Some of their earnings, he said, were reimbursed by Sacramento and Washington.
Many top earners in 2009 were high-profile department chiefs and their top deputies, The Times reported, including:
- John Schunhoff, interim director of Health Services, who made $365,637
- Jonathan Fielding, director of Public Health, who made $358,411
- Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswara, chief medical examiner-coroner, $322,470
- Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman, who made $316,296
The Times requested base salary, overtime and "other earnings" for county employees whose total annual pay exceeded $250,000. "Other earnings" could include bonuses for special skills or responsibilities or unused benefits cashed out as taxable income, among other things.
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