The City has high structural costs. These costs include large in-house staffing as well as very high compensation (e.g. our City attorney earned $440K in 2019 pay and benefits compared to Santa Barbara’s $347K). Beverly Hills outsources its entire legal function. In a 2016 analysis by Transparent California, Santa Monica’s compensation costs per resident were tied with Beverly Hills. At the time, paying employees ten percent less would have saved $30M, almost twice as much as the sales-tax hike to 10.5 percent provided at the time.
Read More: https://smmirror.com/2020/09/sma-r-t-column-budget-reform-and-the-new-normal/