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San Bernardino voters will decide Nov. 5 whether to increase the salaries of their district attorney, sheriff and most other elected positions.
Measure L, placed on the November ballot by the Board of Supervisors on Aug. 6 by consent calendar, would increase salaries by about $100,000.
It needs to receive a majority of votes to change the county charter.
The proposed change would apply to the auditor-controller/treasurer/tax collector and assessor-recorder-county clerk, sheriff and DA, but not county supervisors or the superintendent of schools.
District Attorney Jason Anderson said the sheriff’s department wrote the measure.
“It appears to be a windfall, but if you compare it with the increase in salaries over the last 10 years of similarly situated people, my salary doesn’t even come close,” Anderson said.
Measure L would also remove the language that caps their salaries at the average of their counterparts.
Currently, the county charter says that most elected officials cannot be paid more than the average base salary of their counterparts’ salary in Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura and Kern counties. Measure L would swap out Kern for Los Angeles, direct the DA and sheriff’s base salaries to be based off of the total salaries of their counterparts and remove a 4% yearly raise cap for the positions.
The measure does not explain why Los Angeles County is more comparable to San Bernardino County than Kern County.
San Bernardino County has a population of 2.2 million, compared to 914,000 in Kern County and 9.6 million in Los Angeles County. In 2023, San Bernardino County had 12,600 arrests that resulted in a felony filing, compared to 7,500 in Kern and 48,000 in Los Angeles County.
The switch from Kern County to Los Angeles County would increase the average salary the DA and sheriff are compared to by $40,000.
Examining total pay instead of base pay bumps the average up an additional $60,000. In total, the average sheriff’s salary, if determined in 2023, would move from $281,000 to $399,000. The comparative average DA’s salary would increase from $294,000 to $360,000.
Despite being indexed against other counties and nominally increasing by $13,000, San Bernardino sheriff’s and elected DA pay have fallen $80,000 in value since 2011 due to inflation.
“People who are getting fair market value for a similarly situated job are making $100,000 more. Now, that seems like a lot if you’re not taking into account the 12 years of cost of living and inflation, and cost of COLAs (cost of living adjustments) and bonuses that everybody else (in other counties) gets. I don’t get any of those,” Anderson said.
Anderson’s counterparts in other counties are receiving benefits, in addition to base pay, that he does not, due to San Bernardino’s status as a charter county, he said.
San Bernardino’s charter acts as a local constitution that determines the sheriff’s and DA’s salaries. It can be changed only with a voter-approved measure advanced by the Board of Supervisors.
Riverside County is not a charter county, so its supervisors can authorize one-off bonuses and benefits for its sheriff without voter approval.
The average other pay for sheriffs in Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Kern, Riverside and Orange counties in 2023 was $62,700. For DAs, it was $26,000. The San Bernardino DA received $17,000 in the other-pay category, while the sheriff received $7,000, in 2023.
San Bernardino County has been giving employees cost-of-living adjustments—but not to the sheriff and DA, due to the charter, Anderson said.
This results in high-ranking members of Anderson’s and Sheriff Shannon Dicus’ offices to be paid more than Anderson and Dicus are paid.
In 2023, Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael Fermin was paid $315,000, Undersheriff Rick Bessinger was paid $309,000, Assistant Sheriff Sam Fisk was paid $330,000 and Assistant Sheriff Trevis Newport was paid $297,000.
Anderson said he is not the DA for the money, and that he would triple his salary in the private sector.
“You want to attract decent people to jobs, it can be very difficult at jobs. When you manage an office of 650 people, and you’re responsible for the constitutional rights of everybody who walks in the courthouse doors, asking for a pay raise, I don’t think is unreasonable,” Anderson said.
San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy Reshawd Cobbs declined a request for comment on behalf of Dicus. The department does not typically comment on potential policy changes, Cobbs said.
Anderson said the clause that caps the increase of elected official’s salaries at 4% every year prevents their salaries from keeping up with inflation.
Minimum funding for deputies
Measure L is billed as protection for the funding for sheriff’s deputies who work in San Bernardino County’s unincorporated areas. If approved, the measure would require the county to fund sheriff’s deputies in those areas at minimum the average of the funding provided in the past three years. It would not increase funding, but would set a minimum. Its official name is The San Bernardino County Law Enforcement Staffing and Community Protection Act.
If the county is in a state of financial difficulty, the Board of Supervisors would be able to bypass the clause.
“This was meant to be for minimum levels of staffing for deputies in our unincorporated areas, to create a baseline, sort of an opposite narrative from ‘defund our police’,” said District 3 Supervisor Dawn Rowe, Board of Supervisors chair, by phone Sept. 4.
“One of the things that I think we are exceptionally proud of in San Bernardino County is our law enforcement and our public safety. We went through an era, that actually still to some degree exists, on ‘defund the police.’ This is an opportunity to communicate to our residents that we see and hear and understand that they want to have minimum levels of staffing,” Rowe said at a July 30 special meeting.
Supervisor Curt Hagman agreed.
“Public safety is No. 1. We can’t have good schools if we can’t get the kids to school. We can’t have neighborhoods if they aren’t safe, we need to have businesses thriving. See what’s happening in jurisdictions where they have ‘defund the police.’ See where big chain stores move out of San Francisco or Los Angeles, they’re just shutting their doors because law enforcement is done,” Hagman said.
County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke introduced the measure.
“There have been elected bodies who have voted to reduce the amount of staffing for law enforcement. This would help ensure that residents of the unincorporated areas of the county would have adequate and consistent law enforcement patrol services,” Snoke said at the meeting.
Wording
Section 308 of the County Charter sets the salary:
“The annual salaries of elected County Officers, excepting that of the County Superintendent of Schools and other than Members of the Board of Supervisors, shall be set by, but shall never exceed, the average of the salaries paid to corresponding officers in the following California Counties: Riverside, Kern, San Diego, Orange and Ventura.”
Measure L would replace Section 308, and add a new section exclusively for the sheriff and DA.
Section 308: “Beginning January 1, 2025, the base salary for the elective County officers, except (1) those covered under Section 309, (2) the County Superintendent of Schools, and (3) Members of the Board of Supervisors, shall be set by the average of the base salaries paid to officers holding the most similar position in the following California counties: Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura.”
Section 309: “Beginning January 1, 2025, the base salary for the County Sheriff and District Attorney shall be the average of the salaries paid to the Sheriff and District Attorney in the following California counties: Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura.”
District Attorney Jason Anderson confirmed by phone that he believed his pay would increase by around $100,000.
Measure L support
District Attorney Jason Anderson, Sheriff Shannon Dicus, insurance agent Phil Cothran, Greater High Desert Chamber of Commerce CEO Mark Creffield, and Cherina Betters, who is both chief of equity and access for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools and on the San Bernardino Community College District Board of Trustees.
Follow Our Courts called Betters’ and Cothran’s offices, and texted Creffield, but did not hear back.
“The cost of living continues to increase for all of us. Meanwhile, the people in San Bernardino County are unsafe in their communities, constantly looking over their shoulders due to increased crime from soft-on-crime politics. We can’t afford to live like this anymore,” their published argument for Measure L reads.
Their argument says that Measure L would “ensure that enforcement officers constantly patrol our unincorporated communities by establishing a minimum staffing model.”
It also says that the measure would reduce insurance premiums by assuring insurance companies and would never allow the Board of Supervisors to defund the sheriff’s department’s patrol operation without the consent of voters.
No arguments against the measure were submitted.
The county’s public portal for campaign disclosure does not list any donations for the measure. The URL listed to promote the measure, sanbernardinosafe.com, does not yet have an active website.
Read the measure here.
Read the support argument here.
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