READERS RESPOND

THE ISSUE: Forty-nine city employees made more than $100,000 in 1999; 224

are in the 100K club with their benefits factored in. The Independent

listed their names, positions, salaries and total incomes.

Your recent front page article on employee salaries for the city of

Huntington Beach reaches a new height of irresponsible journalism for the

Independent (“What you pay them,” Feb. 17).

Your obviously biased article was not only unjust to the named and

unnamed employees, but to the citizens of Huntington Beach. The rationale

for printing the names of the employees is weak at best. The Independent

is well aware that a significant number of those employees in the 100K

club are paid significantly less than their counterparts in other Orange

County municipalities.

The city of Huntington Beach is a major employer in this county, with

more than 1,000 full-time employees. It attempts to hire qualified

employees in an ever-shrinking arena of candidates willing to work in

municipal government. This article on salaries and your recent employee

holiday party articles brought the type of negative attention to city

employment that will continue to impede its ability to hire and retain

quality employees.

What continues to amaze me is the fact that the Independent continually

fails to interview major employers in this city or county to get their

opinions. Instead, it continually publishes negative comments from the

same few people in the community. These continually published naysayers,

to my knowledge, have never been in the employment of people reaching to

the size of Huntington Beach.

The Independent needs to realize something that I learned early in my

college public administration classes. The employer nor the employee

determines appropriate wages. The job market determines that. To stray

away from that rule is a sure guarantee of failure.