Ok, I’ve looked at the latest Chronicle article. There’s a few things I could snark about, but in keeping with my earlier resolution, I’m just going to point out the highlights. There were raises in addition to the bonuses, but now we know the amounts of their base pay before and after the raises. And I have to say, the raises might have been merited, if not to the extent that they were given. The pay of Christopher Mays caught my eye: He is an Administrative Specialist, (i.e., mid-rank paper pusher with no supervisory duties, but important responsibilities nonetheless). This is about the rank I’d expect to find in an office that supports council members and their staff.

The problem is, before the raises he was three pay grades higher than me, but making $3k less. That’s….screwed up, even for the city. HR should never have allowed that to happen. Believe me, I’m not overpaid; my raise when I got bumped up a pay grade was less than 3%. His $26k salary was woefully inadequate, but I know what caused it: HR penalizes employees who jump too many pay grades at once. His prior job was in Public Works, I believe as a pay grade 13 or 14 (seven or six grades lower than he is now), but he had the connections to make the jump to the pro tem’s office. Only HR won’t allow anyone to recieve a huge % pay increase, even if they jump several pay grades. They give only a “small” increase. Although I don’t know his actual pay amount prior to the jump, I’d peg it in the area of $24k. So it was about a 20% pay increase. This seems large, but it may not have put him in the bottom end of the pay grade, i.e. his pay was so low it could have been less than the minimum for his position.

On the flip side, after the second increase, his salary was $44k, which might have been a little high for that grade. Supervisors in some departments are two pay grades lower, making about $40k*, so it’s not a given that it was. Front-line managers fall around $45k. It’s hard to say; thanks to HR’s abysmal policies, pay scales within a grade are insanely varied.

*(Edit: There are multiple types of supervisors. Those with heavy additional responsibilities have slightly different titles I won’t bore you with, and higher pay grades. It’s those I’m talking about here. )

I call bullshit on that “minimum raise” practice. You get the job, you should damn well get the pay. Even if you feel that he should get the bare minimum when he walked in the door (an assumption that may or may not be warranted by his qualifications), it should have been properly adjusted after some time in grade. I’d say that Ms. Hernandez should have brought it to Ms. Alvarado’s attention, and Ms. Alvarado should have authorized a correction. It’s worth noting that the subject came up in some fashion, since, by her own admission, she asked her employees if they felt underpaid, and two answered yes.

And of course, in 2004, when 2,400 city employees decided to bid this chickenshit system goodbye before White could hammer their pensions, he called them “disloyal.”

I dont’ have titles/pay grades for all four positions, but the original pay for Florence Watkins also looks very, very low for her title. Hernandez, I’m not sure, but I think it was a touch on the low side as well. I’m not sure about Ms. Orta. And bear in mind that these are low-end salaries in a pay scale that’s low-end to start with, and going downhill every year. Mayor White’s 1.5% pay increase doesn’t keep up with the 2005 inflation rate of 3.6%, and there was no 2005 city-wide raise to keep up with 2004.

But the councilwoman said Wednesday that she never authorized anything higher than a 2 percent salary increase approved in 2004.

Pieces are beginning to fall into place. I don’t think the above is true; I think the pay issue was brought to Ms. Alvarado’s attention in 2004, and she just told her trusty second in command, Ms. Hernandez, “You see to it, I’m too busy.” Only her trusty second in command wasn’t so trusty after all, and realizing she had her hand in the cookie jar, went hog wild.

In closing, I have to snark at least a little bit. (What, go cold turkey? Oh, please.)

White said after the meeting that the investigation could be “over soon.”

Translation: “We have our scapegoats, now we’re going to wrap this up before you figure out what’s going on.”

But he said it appeared that the pro tem office’s $320,000 budget in this fiscal year, up 25 percent over 2005, was too high. “If there was enough money for somebody to steal, there was too much money,” he said.

Um, wouldn’t that describe the entire budget?

Update: See the comments over at Bloghouston for a discussion of the strategies behind some of the city’s actions, and why the employees are still collecting the inflated salaries.