Gavin Newsom said he’d take a pay cut 3 months ago. He didn’t
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he and the rest of the state government’s workforce would take 10% pay cuts when he announced broad cuts to state spending in May because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Those cuts for most state employees took effect last month, but Newsom did not reduce his own wages, according to pay data the State Controller’s Office provided in response to an information request from The Sacramento Bee.
State Controller Betty Yee was the only one of the state’s eight elected constitutional officers — such as the treasurer, secretary of state and attorney general — to take a pay cut last month, according to the data.
The four elected members of the Board of Equalization and most lawmakers in the state Legislature also didn’t take cuts.
After questions from The Bee on Wednesday, Governor’s Office spokesman Nathan Click said an oversight by the office resulted in Newsom keeping his full pay, which for July was $17,479.
Newsom sent a letter to the Controller’s Office Wednesday asking Yee to reduce his pay retroactively to July 1.
Statewide elected officers, including the governor, are exempt from the pay cut orders in budget legislation that reduced pay for most of the state’s workforce. Newsom’s chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, sent an email to the constitutional officers Wednesday afternoon encouraging them to request reductions immediately.
By about 4:15 p.m., the Controller’s Office had received requests from Treasurer Fiona Ma, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara requesting reductions, said Controller’s Office spokeswoman Jennifer Hanson.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Padilla would also request the reduction. The Board of Equalization didn’t return a message.
Yee requested the reduction on July 20, in time to reduce her pay that month, Hanson said.
“Millions of Californians have lost their jobs, and our state continues to reel from a pandemic-induced recession,” Yee said in an emailed statement. “State workers absorbed a pay cut to help balance the budget. It is important to me to make the same sacrifice as my team.”
The California Citizens Compensation Commission makes recommendations on pay for state officials and legislators. At its annual meeting in May, the commission instituted pay freezes — not cuts — while encouraging officials to go further and surrender part of their pay. Newsom at that time was already pledging to reduce his pay.
Yvonne Walker, president of SEIU Local 1000, the state’s largest union, expressed confidence Thursday in the governor’s intentions.
“If there’s one thing we know, it’s that our governor keeps his word,” Walker said in an emailed statement. “We can only imagine that with all the things going on in our state — the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic recession, and incidents of police brutality combined with years of systemic racism driving our fellow citizens to the edge of their sanity, and now a record-breaking heat wave taxing our power grid — it wouldn’t be surprising if processing the necessary paperwork has taken a backseat to more pressing matters. We remain confident that this will take place as promised and that it will be retroactive.”
State unions negotiated pay cuts for the vast majority of state workers. Generally, the terms of the agreements also applied to managers. Pay records show that agency secretaries, the next-highest-ranking employees after the constitutional officers, had their pay reduced.
The state made the reductions for most workers using a personal leave program, which cuts workers’ pay by the equivalent of two days of work — 9.23% of their monthly pay — and in exchange gives them two flexible days off to use at their discretion.
Constitutional officers requested straight pay cuts of 9.23% in their letters to the Controller’s Office on Wednesday.
The actual reductions in take-home pay for rank-and-file workers are less than that, since the state is temporarily suspending the contributions workers normally make to their retirement health care. Workers normally contribute between 1.4% and 4.4% of their pay toward a fund for the health care.
The cuts were projected to save the state $2.8 billion per year. The state also suspended raises many state workers had been scheduled to receive in July.
This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Gavin Newsom said he’d take a pay cut 3 months ago. He didn’t."