Where to Find What El Segundo Pays its City Employee Union Members and Managers

Here is where to find out what El Segundo pays its City employee union members and managers. Make sure to see the explanatory information below to understand what the data represents.

By far, the police and firefighter employees have the most excessive and unsustainable salaries and CalPERS pension contributions. Most of the El Segundo employee benefits cost is the City-paid CalPERS employer contributions for police and firefighter employees, plus the City-paid CalPERS employee contributions for police employees.

This is discussed further below.

Transparent California Website (TransparentCalifornia.com):

Here are links to Total Pay and Benefits cost data for El Segundo city employees, provided to Transparent California (TransparentCalifornia.com) by the City of El Segundo. The .csv (CSV, or comma-separated values) files can be opened directly from common spreadsheet and database programs, including the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program.

2014 El Segundo City Employee Total Pay and Benefits:
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/el-segundo/
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/export/el-segundo-2014.csv

2013 El Segundo City Employee Total Pay and Benefits:
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2013/el-segundo/
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/export/el-segundo-2013.csv

2012 El Segundo City Employee Total Pay without Benefits:
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/salaries/2012/el-segundo/
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/export/el-segundo-2012.csv

2011 El Segundo City Employee Total Pay without Benefits:
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/salaries/2011/el-segundo/
http://TransparentCalifornia.com/export/el-segundo-2011.csv

City of El Segundo website:

http://www.ElSegundo.org/

There is a “City Employee Compensation Information” link near the bottom of the left column:

http://www.ElSegundo.org/home_nav/city_employee_compensation_information.asp

Note that the PDF files mislabeled as “2012 City Total Compensation”, “2013 City Total Compensation”, and “2014 City Total Compensation” contain only Total Earnings, NOT Total Compensation.

Total Earnings = Regular Earnings + Special Compensation + Overtime (at 150% of the regular pay rate) + Vacation and Sick Leave Cash-Out.

Total Compensation = Total Earnings plus all other forms of compensation, including CalPERS pension contributions paid by the City, deferred compensation, healthcare, dental, and vision care insurance benefits, life insurance, car allowance, cell phone allowance, personal membership and subscription costs, etc.

The California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) Employer Contribution is a specified percentage of Regular Earnings plus Special Compensation. It is significantly higher for safety employees (police and firefighters) than for miscellaneous (non-safety) employees. The police and firefighter Employee Contribution has been fixed at 9% of Regular Earnings plus Special Compensation, but the City was been paying all of this 9% for police employees, and is still paying most of it.

The file labeled “CalPERS El Segundo Employer Contribution Rates per Year (last 12 Years)” shows how El Segundo’s CalPERS Employer Contribution percentage increases each year and is projected to be about 50% for 2016:

http://www.elsegundo.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=13973

The City of El Segundo was paying about $40,000 to $85,000 in CalPERS pension contributions per individual police and firefighter per year a few years ago, when the employer contribution was only about 26%.

Public Safety Project Website (at PublicSafetyProject.org):

Some of the City of El Segundo employee compensation data obtained by Mike Robbins under the California Public Records Act (CPRA), Government Code Section 6250 et seq., has been posted on the PublicSafetyProject.org website. Some of the union contracts and other information has also been posted at PublicSafetyProject.org. However, many of the documents and data obtained under the CPRA has not yet been posted, but will be as time permits.

Click HERE to see how one El Segundo City employee got a 23% raise and was paid nearly $600,000 total in his last year.

http://publicsafetyproject.org/blog/2014/03/03/which-el-segundo-city-employee-was-paid-nearly-600000-in-last-year/

Additional Information:

The TransParent California website, TransparentCalifornia.com, provides compensation and benefits cost data for government employees of cities, counties, the state, and other government entities.

Transparent California provides Total Pay and Benefits data for the City of El Segundo for the years 2013 and 2014, but does not include the benefits cost for 2011 and 2012.

Also, all of the compensation data does not reflect the full annual salary for employees that did not work the entire year or that got raises in the middle of the year. It is necessary to know the employee start and end dates during the year, and preferably how many days and hours each employee worked during the year.

Keep in mind that El Segundo firefighters are on-duty for 48 hours, and are off-duty for four days. They get payed to sleep and eat, including regularly scheduled overtime at 150% of their regular pay rate.

Also, the data will vary for calendar year (e.g., 2014) versus fiscal year (e.g., FY 2014-15), where the start and end of the fiscal year is determined by the City.

El Segundo police and firefighters get full retirement after only 30 years of service, as early as age 50 (existing police employees) or 55 (existing firefighter employees), with CalPERS pensions paying $100,000 to more than $200,000 per year, plus annual COLAs. If they claim a disability retirement, real or fictitious, as 55% of El Segundo’s police and firefighters do, then half their pension income is tax-free.