City of Artesia Rewards Bad Behavior in Two Managers, While Completely Ignoring Everyone Else
By Andrew Perry
President, Artesia Local 1520
Vice President, AFSCME District Council 36
Artesia, California - City employees had to do a double take when the City Council decided to offer handsome salary increases for two managers in particular, while maintaining historic low salaries for all other employees.
As union president, I take the philosophy of transparent local government to heart. Many Artesians have expressed to me the approval of not just the fight for the City in 2021, but also the reasons behind it - that employees were concerned about the City's finances and the ability of the City to serve its residents.
Recent events have again raised concerns about transparency, particularly in light of the roles these two managers played in 2021, when the City was under a different city manager, whom employees contend ran the City like a mafia boss.
How Two High Level Managers Compromise Artesia's Integrity
When every employee rebelled against the former City Manager for election rigging, lying about the City’s finances, destroying public documents, and harassment, there were only three individuals who did not join the whistleblowers. In fact, these three remained loyal to him while aware of his unethical behavior, and in the case of finances, even assisted in his plans - which was basically to pretend to the City Council and the public that the City was being operated efficiently and the state of its finances were wonderful.
Here's the issue: there is a code of ethics that any public sector manager must adhere to. As soon as someone accepts the position, the Finance Manager takes responsibility for the City's finances. The Finance Manager might rely on someone else to put the numbers together, but it’s ultimately her responsibility and her name on the line when submitting it. Yet, even knowing that the numbers didn't quite match up to reality, the Finance Manager still submitted the budget. She should have said that the budget was not accurate.
Similarly, the Deputy City Manager also had an obligation to speak on the budget, to address employee morale, and respond to the various issues that employees had alleged. She did not. In fact, the Deputy City Manager assisted in the firing of the one executive manager who did say something; the former HR Manager. After hearing all the complaints from employees about the unethical orders (and a few we think are illegal) that the City Manager asked us to do, it was the former HR Manager who started whistle blowing. Then, after the City Council voted to NOT investigate, the HR Manager even suggested that managers should unionize to protect themselves. That HR Manager was fired in the midst of all those protected and organized job actions, and I tell you the truth - every city employee believes he was fired because of his whistle blowing. None the less, it was the current Deputy City Manager who went into his office and told the HR Manager that he was fired. This crooked and unethical behavior is dangerous when we're talking about one person who can potentially run the City in the City Manager's absence. These actions may cost the City hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in a lawsuit.
City Commissions A Salary Survey
From 2016 to 2021, the City was suffering from a severe 15 percent employee turnover. Considering the size of the city, a turnover rate that high is catastrophic. For reference, the public sector's average turnover rate is 1.4 percent - this accounts for retirements, leaving for advancement, and disciplinary reasons. The reason for high turnover in Artesia was due to a former City Manager (Rawlings) who had been accused by employees of sexual harassment, discrimination, directing employees to destroy public records, lying about the City's finances, and rigging the 2020 election. Add in the underpaid status of city employees, and that was a recipe for the City's high turnover rate.
To address the high turnover rates, the City commissioned a class & compensation study (aka a salary survey) with a consultant called Public Sector Personnel Consultants, and paid them at least $7000. The survey was conducted between June and August 2022. The salary survey's findings discovered that most Artesia employees are paid far less than employees in other cities. For example, the Planning Manager is a management position who oversees the Planning Department’s day to day operations. The average pay for Planning Managers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties is $23,000 higher than what Artesia offers. The City of Cerritos sits at the 50th percentile of surveyed cities, and represents the median average. It’s worse than that, though. The City of Los Alamitos is dead last when it comes to the pay for a Planning Manager. What Artesia offers its Planning Manager is even less than Los Alamitos. This is what we’re talking about.
Examples of this same disparity can be found throughout Artesia's Parks & Recreation, Planning, Public Safety, Public Works, Finance, and Administration departments. It's so bad that when other cities negotiate salaries, their employees ask that Artesia not be included in the pool of surveyed cities, because it would drag their numbers down.
City Increases Salaries of Deputy City Manager, Finance Manager
The salary survey provided the City a justification to bring its employees up to par with other cities. However, instead of addressing the turnover rate the City was experiencing, the City Council voted in October 2022 that only the Rawlings loyalists would enjoy the benefits of the salary survey.
In addition to their eyebrow raising salary increases, the Rawlings loyalists even got several special perks, like 100 percent payout of sick leave balance upon separation from the City.
Everyone else received a 0.75 percent (less than one percent) Cost Of Living Allowance (COLA), but were promised we would be able to negotiate a way to implement the salary survey findings so that city employees could be on par. There was the potential for an additional discretionary one percent to that 0.75 (or a potential 1.75 percent COLA), but it was denied because of “budget concerns”.
City Again Cites "Budget Concerns" When Negotiating Salary Study
When it came time to negotiate the implementation of the salary study, employees felt like this was the moment that would justify their losing out on that additional one percent discretionary COLA several months earlier.
However, when speaking with city councilmembers, union employees were told not to ask for much . This puzzled them. As president, it puzzled me too. According to one councilmember, the City already gave us a salary increase. This added to my own confusion, because we did not. The City gave two non-union managers fat salary increases that put them far ahead of the field when compared to other cities. But when it came to the rest of the City's managers and employees, that 0.75 percent COLA was all that could be mustered due to "budget concerns".
It was in July 2023 that the City rejected the union's offer.
Final Thoughts
So, here's our issue. If there are budget concerns that are so detrimental to the City's operations, why did the City even offer those huge pay increases for two managers who were historically part of the reason why the City had budget problems in the first place? Why go above and beyond the average salary?
I asked that latter question to City Councilmembers and the current HR Manager, and received answers like "Those managers (Deputy City Manager and Finance Manager) had problems with Rawlings too" and "Because of their positions, they were given special consideration."
I don't buy either. Those managers may have had problems, but they defended the source of the problem until the rest of us got rid of it. And what "special consideration" about their positions can possibly justify going above and beyond the 50th percentile of surveyed cities in light of apparent "budget concerns"?
Why even commission a salary study, and subsequently go through the motions of negotiating it? Why even lead employees on in the wake of rejecting a meager one percent discetionary COLA increase, with the hope of later negotiating a salary that would be on par with every other city in the area?
If the City was worried about hiring and keeping staff, especially Planning Department staff (which was one of their stated reasons for conducting the survey), their counter proposal should have been that they wanted to only focus on those positions that saw the greatest pay disparity.
It's sickeningly ironic that a salary survey that was agreed to by the union and the City to be conducted per both bargaining units' contracts benefited not a single union member. Instead, the only people who benefited were the non-union executive managers. The employees basically got duped into a good old fashioned bait and switch tactic. You know the hard working people that maintain the City's parks and streets, or who operate the Parks & Recreation Department, or those of us who basically run the City’s administrative operations from City Hall? We all got scammed by Artesia's executive management team.
Artesians, I leave this information to you to come up with your own conclusions. But if you do support us, reach out to me (Andrew Perry) as we develop ideas to make this more public at artesialocal1520@gmail.com. When it comes times for election, I urge you to at least consider the candidates whom we will eventually endorse. And as always, while a discussion may be heated, let's also keep it civil.
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