SAN JOSE — The toughest case to crack at the San Jose Police Department may be figuring out how to hire more cops when taxpayers already are paying more for their officers than nearly any Bay Area city — even as officers are fleeing for bigger paychecks elsewhere.
From pay and overtime to city contributions toward their pension and medical benefits, San Jose police officers in 2012 cost taxpayers an average of $189,621 each, this newspaper’s review of payroll data found. That total ranked fifth out of 79 Bay Area cities that supplied raw payroll data in response to public records requests — and that’s before a pay raise the officers won last week.
But police cost so much in San Jose mainly because their benefits are so expensive. Looking just at regular wages, San Jose officers’ average gross pay of $111,185 ranks only in the middle of the pack in the Bay Area and near the bottom in Silicon Valley, the data reviewed by this newspaper showed. As a result, many officers have been hitting the road for better-paying cities, creating a shortage so bad that some detectives are being pulled off their investigations to roam the streets on patrol.
“Our take-home pay is, like, at the bottom,” said Sgt. Jim Unland, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association. “We know that because we’ve had nearly 200 officers resign and go to other places, and these guys are comparing paychecks.”
On Tuesday, facing the officer exodus and concerns over rising crime in one of the nation’s safest big cities, city leaders agreed to give officers a much bigger raise than they had initially offered, totaling nearly 11 percent over the next two years.
But don’t expect that to end the bitter feud between the officers and City Hall. City leaders say the only way they reasonably can afford the additional $20 million in raises without gutting other programs is by shrinking benefit costs. They already are asking new recruits to work longer for a smaller pension to keep costs in check. And the police union is leading employee efforts in court to fight voter-approved retirement benefit cuts that would make veteran officers either pay more for their pensions or reduce them.
From 2010 to 2012, San Jose police saw their average gross pay fall by about $14,000 following a 10 percent pay cut, dropping the city way down on the list of the Bay Area’s best-paid cops, from near the top to No. 32. But the cost of the officers’ benefits shot up so dramatically during that span that the total bill for taxpayers to employ each officer still increased nearly $20,000 overall.
“Total cost is a problem,” said Mayor Chuck Reed, who led the effort to shrink pension benefits and costs. He argues that “young officers are more interested in pay” now than a big pension down the road.
The average officers’ gross pay would rise to about $123,460 in 2015 under the new raises — an increase of about $12,000 per cop. They’d also get a one-time bonus of about 2 percent of their pay. Union members and the full City Council still must ratify the contract.
San Jose pays about 69 percent more than the Bay Area average for officer benefits — $78,436 per officer for things such as medical insurance and pensions, the newspaper’s review found. Deputy City Manager Alex Gurza says officials from other cities “fall off their chair” when they hear how high their pension costs are.
By some measures, San Jose has been quite generous to its retired officers thanks to pension increases since the 1990s. A Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research study last year found that San Jose had the highest average police and firefighter pension — $90,612 a year — among California’s 20 largest municipalities with their own retirement plans, rather than a state-managed benefit.
But San Jose’s high pension costs may stem in part from how it manages its finances. Many other cities participate in a state retirement system that critics say has been too slow to pay down its debts and eventually will be forced to pass along huge costs to member cities — costs San Jose already is taking care of.
Reed argues that the city’s officers cannot afford the hefty pension benefits any more than City Hall can. Officers already contribute toward their benefits and now are seeing bigger bites out of their paychecks to cover retirement fund shortfalls and rising health premiums.
Health care contributions for single officers have tripled over the past decade, to $80 per month this year. If the city wins its pension reforms in court, officers will see a fifth of their gross salary shaved off for pensions and retiree health care if they don’t agree to less expensive benefits.
Unland argues that taxpayers already “are getting a hell of a deal from their police force,” which patrols a city of nearly 1 million with barely 1,000 officers, one of the nation’s leanest big-city departments. But the bottom line, he says, is that officers compare what they can get in pay and benefits from San Jose with other departments.
“They look at it as a straight business decision,” Unland said.
When you add it all up, Councilman Pete Constant — a former San Jose police union board member in his days as an officer, who supports the city’s pension reforms — said the recent raises will keep the city near the top of the pack in total cost-per-officer and near the middle in terms of pay.
“Because of the pay, we’ve had difficulties both in recruiting and retaining police officers,” Constant said. “We have to stem the tide of departures in the city, and pay is a critical component of that.”
Contact Mike Rosenberg at mrosenberg@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5705. Follow him at Twitter.com/RosenbergMerc.
