Given the state's budget woes, the prison health care receivership has raised eyebrows for generous compensation of its employees. A state audit exposed exorbitant salaries in 2007 at the quasi-public agency. Yet enormous salaries remain common.
Last year, seven of 26 staffers – including two part-timers – still were paid more than the $225,000 annual rate earned by corrections chief Matthew Cate. Eight enjoy large Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation pensions on top of their salaries.
And prison doctors and nurses dominate the state's best-paid roster. More than 240 doctors or nurses, state employees overseen by the receiver, were paid more than the $226,359 earned by the state prison department's medical chief.
The top-paid doctor and nurse made $441,774 and $330,499, respectively. Of the 1,000 highest-paid state employees last year, more than half were corrections clinicians, based on state data.
Receiver J. Clark Kelso earns $224,000 a year, down from his predecessor's $620,628. Yet Senior Counsel John Hagar, a contractor who worked for $250 an hour, took in nearly $390,000 last year working three-quarters time.
Kelso called the corrections pensioners on his staff essential for managing and moving unwell but dangerous convicts. One was paid almost $361,000 last year in total compensation.
To get salaries for his core staff under control, Kelso said, as many employees as possible will be shifted from highly paid receivership jobs to state jobs with state pay scales.
Last week Hagar resigned under pressure. His duties were absorbed by Chief Deputy Elaine Bush, a state employee who earns $160,562 annually.
Reining in compensation presents different challenges for the majority of clinicians managed by the receiver.
Before the receivership, an expert testified in court proceedings, prisons would hire any doctor with "a license, a pulse and a pair of shoes." Salaries were radically boosted to lure qualified staff. Even most skeptics of the receiver's operations said that steep raises were needed to allow the state to replace substandard clinicians.
Dr. Owen Murray, medical director for the Texas prisons, called a lack of competent providers "the worst thing you can have." Texas also offered large raises, he said.
To critics, the issue is not whether incentives were warranted, but whether the pendulum has swung too far, given the dire state budget.
The median salary for prison doctors who are state employees is at least $35,000 more than comparable doctors in San Francisco – among the best paid in California – and $60,000 more than in Sacramento. Many contract prison doctors earn far more.
"It's fairly outrageous, the salaries (they) are paying," said Joan Petersilia, a criminology professor at University of California, Irvine. "It's the downside of what happens when the courts intervene in management practices."
Call The Bee's Charles Piller, (916) 321-1113.
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