Pay Dirt

Last month, as the city’s budget headed into a meltdown, Mayor Greg
Nickels’s office pushed legislation that would have given huge pay
raises to two of the city’s top officials—and opened the door to
higher pay for many top-ranking city employees in the future.

The legislation would have created a new position at the city called
“Executive 5” with a higher maximum pay than the current top position,
Executive 4. (Every position at the city has a minimum and maximum
potential salary, although the mayor can ask to pay people more.)
Creating the new position would have allowed the city to pay police
chief Gil Kerlikowske and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) director Chuck
Clarke as much as $232,213—an increase Nickels said was necessary
to keep the two men’s salaries competitive. At the time, Nickels
assured the city council that he would only use the new position to
boost the pay of Clarke and Kerlikowske; however, once the new position
was created, the mayor would be free to bump up anyone he pleased.

Although the city council rejected the mayor’s request—noting,
in a memo, that Kerlikowske’s salary was actually 14 percent above the
market average—the city has ended up handing out a number of
substantial raises anyway. Between 2007 and 2008, the number of
employees at the top pay level (Executive 4) doubled—from 11 in
2006 to 22 in 2008 (12 were promoted; one left). That’s not an
insignificant increase: While Executive 3s make between $101,100 and
$168,810, Executive 4s can make as much as $196,794.

While the raises have only cost the city about $30,000 so far, the
newly reclassified employees’ potential salary increases are
significant and could eventually amount to hundreds of thousands of
dollars. In a year when the city council was proposing to save money by
eliminating programs that keep kids off the streets and help homeless
people find permanent housing, the raises look a bit unseemly.

Some city-hall observers have speculated that the mayor asked for so
many new Executive 4s, in part, to prove the need for a new Executive 5
position. Mayoral spokesman Alex Fryer denies this, noting that most of
the employees promoted were in the police and fire departments, which
are semiautonomous. (Seven of the twelve employees who were promoted
work for SPD, four work for SFD, and one works for the parks
department.) Fryer says the mayor does not intend to push for a new
Executive 5 position in the future, but blames the departure of SPU
director Clarke, who left last month to become head of the Cascade
Water Alliance, on his “uncompetitive” salary.

Fire department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick says SFD director
Gregory Dean approved the reclassifications “to help retain experienced
workers”; the Seattle Police Department did not return a call for
comment.