How overpaid is the Escondido City Attorney? You decide.
The Escondido City Attorney employs 7 attorneys (counting himself) and 6 staff.
https://www.escondido.org/Data/Sites/1/media/PDFs/Finance/PreliminaryOperatingBudget1516.pdf
page 14
The San Diego City Attorney has 155 attorneys working under his management, and 355 employees total.
http://www.sandiego.gov/fm/annual/pdf/fy16/vol2/v2cityattorney.pdf
San Diego runs a big misdemeanor department, handling FAR more issues and cases than the backwater Escondido City Attorney department. The county handles Escondido’s misdemeanor load.
San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith’s 2014 salary was $202,000.
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/san-diego/jan-i-goldsmith/
Escondido City Attorney Jeff Epp made $212,000 in salary in 2014 — and that’s not counting the massive payments he received that year for unused vacation days, sick days, etc. (totaling another $178,000). Counting all of his benefits, his total compensation exceeded half a million dollars in 2014!
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/escondido/jeffrey-r-epp/
Moreover, arguably in Escondido the high pay in no way guarantees quality performance. City Attorney Jeff Epp seems to be remarkably unfamiliar with California law. Reportedly he informed Escondido Mayor Sam Abed that it was fine to put a link to the mayor’s political campaign on the official city website. It’s not, and any competent city attorney would have known that. Obviously that foo-pah didn’t hurt Epp’s earning power, or his job security even a little.
If you’d like to read more about how overpaid the Escondido City Manager and City Attorney are (it’s breathtaking), check out this latest U-T article on the subject. This dynamic duo were two the top paid officials in California in 2014. Given the rapacious competition among CA cities for such honors, that’s an impressive achievement!
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/dec/10/escondido-city-pay/
The lesson? Get an Escondido city job!!! Apparently in that berg, the foxes are in charge of the hen house.