The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday declined to increase the pay scale for its civil service director after being told it would allow her to receive her ninth raise since 2020.
With its 8-0 unanimous decision — Councilmember Cindy Allen and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson were absent — the council rejected a 5.1% pay scale increase that would have allowed the Civil Service Commission Executive Director Christina Winting to earn up to $275,002 a year.
This would have allowed Winting, who heads one of the city’s smallest departments, to be among the highest-paid officials in Long Beach, according to a letter released Monday by City Manager Tom Modica.
In the letter, Modica wrote that Winting has received eight raises since 2020, totaling a 36% increase in salary — about $62,000 — in four years.
“Which is an anomaly for executive compensation in Long Beach,” Modica wrote.
It was Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie who initially flagged the item Tuesday night following “shared concerns” raised in Modica’s letter.
“One of the comments he puts in there, if you read it completely, is that the compensation proposed will not be consistent with the salary range of other comparable departments,’” Ricks-Oddie said. “That gives me pause.”
Councilmember Al Austin, who presided over the meeting as acting mayor, agreed to table the item after saying he didn’t “feel comfortable talking about salaries and negotiating in open sessions like this.”
“To me, this is something that should be done behind the scenes,” Austin said, but he called the pace of raises “pretty extraordinary … for any employee.”
The Long Beach City Council was considering the pay scale increase at the request of the Civil Service Commission, which sets the executive director’s salary within the bounds the council allows.
While the request for an increase in pay scale made no mention of increased salary, Modica said that historically, “every time the maximum was allowed, they’ve appointed at the maximum.”
If Winting reached that maximum, it would have put her on par with some of the highest-paid department heads in Long Beach, including the city’s Police and Fire Departments, who manage 1,217 and 550 people, respectively. They made $284,573 and $274,526 in 2023, according to Transparent California, which tracks public employees’ pay. It would have put her above the city’s public works director, who oversees about 629 people and made $243,083. Modica, the city’s top executive, made $336,307.
Winting currently oversees 21 staff members.
Modica instead recommended a 2% scale bump, which would match Winting’s allowable pay with the median scale of all city departments. But by receiving and filing the item, the council didn’t even allow that.
In response to the memo, Civil Service Commission President Robyn Gordon-Peterson said she has assured both Modica and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson the commission has “no intent to give an increase that is outside our agreement.”
“I don’t think my request is unreasonable and I’ve given my word that I would not go beyond the salaries that are prevailing,” she said.
The back-and-forth on Tuesday played against a months-long backdrop of disagreements between Modica and the commission over potential changes to their department.
The Civil Service Department oversees the hiring of about 6,000 employees across 23 departments — about 40% of Long Beach’s workforce. Due to mounting casework and understaffing, the city has pointed to the department as a clog in the hiring process; departments have said it takes between seven months to a year to fill a vacant position in a city that has a 22% vacancy rate.
As a potential remedy, the city is looking to bring before voters a measure in November that would merge the Civil Service and Human Resources departments, saying they could slim down the hiring process to 90 days.
In response, the Civil Service Commission and activist groups have warned the merger would give rise to cronyism and unethical hiring practices that are normally stemmed by their department, which acts as a checks-and-balance in the hiring process.