You could almost feel the lawyerly love flowing from the floor of the state Senate yesterday as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle proclaimed the need to boost the pay of California’s 3,400 state-employed lawyers, many of them deputy attorneys general.
“The state of California should not be the training ground” for other public agencies, said Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster.
“It’s the old story: You get what you pay for,” said Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach.
The state has to compete with the pay offered to lawyers in other public agencies, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said, so “we don’t end up being a Double A farm team.”
And with a resounding 34-4 vote, the state Senate passed SB 1718 by Perata. That’s strong support for legislation that would benefit a labor union representing lawyers -– two groups not always among Republicans’ favorites. It probably didn’t hurt that Perata watered down the bill before bringing it to the floor.
SB 1718, originally dubbed the “pay parity” bill, would have tied state lawyers’ salaries to the average earned by comparable personnel in 20 public agencies, including the eight largest district attorneys offices. As amended last week, the bill now only requires the Department of Personnel Administration to annually survey the pay of lawyers in other public agencies and share that information with the Legislature, the governor, and the union representing state attorneys – with the hope that the raw numbers will guilt state negotiators to raise state lawyers’ pay.
Why weaken the bill? As the union’s leaders wrote to members today, “it became very clear that the original version of the bill had very little chance of passing in either house, and in any event, faced a certain veto if and when it reached the governor.” The new version “is far preferable to a veto or worse, an early exit from further debate from this session.”
With entry-level deputy attorneys general earning just $56,088 to start, many state prosecutors earn much less than their counterparts elsewhere, especially those working in big cities and counties. But with leaders of the state lawyers’ union opining that they cannot strike because of ethical obligations to their clients, a bill that would expose salary disparities instead of ending them may be the best that state attorneys can hope for.
— Cheryl Miller
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