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More Than 12% Of City Employees Make $100K+

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May 11, 2008 9:26 am US/Pacific

More Than 12% Of City Employees Make $100K+

 Accounting Of L.A. Employees Making $100K+

LOS ANGELES More than 6,000 of the Los Angeles' roughly 48,000 employees earn more than $100,000 per year, and the average salary is $68,850 for civilians and $93,800 for police and firefighters, it was reported Sunday.

Department of Water and Power employees make an average of $76,949 a year, the Daily News reported based on records obtained via the California Public Records Act.

The total payroll comes to about $3.2 billion, or nearly half the city's $7 billion budget, the newspaper reported.

City officials approved labor contracts giving some 22,000 workers raises of 23 percent over five years in October, despite warnings of the current economic downturn.

City leaders are now working to close a $406 million budget gap for the fiscal year starting in July.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has proposed eliminating 800 positions, some of which are vacant.

City Controller Laura Chick said the raises granted to various unions show "that local government knows how to spend, spend, spend and does not understand how to keep expenditures in line with revenue.

"The point is the packages -- negotiated first with IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18) and then with the rest of the unions -- weren't negotiated in a reality-based climate looking at the facts of the city budget," she told the Daily News.

The City Council's Budget and Finance Committee will resume budget deliberations Wednesday.

(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

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