Los Angeles City employees outrageous salaries and bonuses add insult to injury in the midst of the catastrophic Los Angeles Fires. Hundreds of L.A. City employees are becoming fat cat millionaires while Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the Los Angeles City Council mismanage city resources.

The amount of money raked in by L.A. City employees is beyond outrageous. The abuse of tax dollars to enrich Los Angeles public union employees is corrupt and depraved.

In 2023, Jason Getchius, a Fire Captain II with the city of Los Angeles, raked in $906,160.84 in salary, overtime, "other pay" and benefits. His benefits for 2023 totaled $104,771.52. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The City of Los Angeles in cahoots with public unions is rewarding massive salaries and bonuses to city employees for jobs that other cities pay non-government employees to do at far lower pay.

Why is Los Angeles paying gargantuan salaries and bonuses to city employees to perform electrical transmission jobs when it falls under the jurisdiction of utility companies to do the same work? Whenever there's a power outage, utility companies make repairs to resolve outages. So why is the city of Los Angeles paying $500k to $700k salaries, bonuses and overtime to city employee to perform those tasks?

Why is a Fire Captain II paid $613,000 in overtime pay when his base salary is $176,000?

Another scam involving Los Angeles and public unions was revealed in a 2016 Los Angeles Times investigative report.

The report is titled: How overtime has made L.A.’s port pilots the city’s best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year. 

2023: L.A. port pilot pay jumped to $860,000.

2016: The small corps of mariners who guide ships in and out of the Port of Los Angeles are by far the best-paid city employees, averaging $450,000 in salary and bonuses.

But unlike pilots in other West Coast ports, the pilots in Los Angeles have a union contract that boosts their incomes in unusual ways, including a clause that guarantees them at least four hours of overtime pay if they are called back to work after their shift ends.

Such generous provisions are meant to help managers deal with the unexpected staffing shortages, but for L.A.’s port pilots, callback pay has become a routine, and significant, bonus.

From July 2015 to June 2016, L.A.’s 11 full-time pilots were called back after 81% of their regular shifts, according to city payroll data.

Pilot Ed Royles was called back after 90% of his shifts, boosting his pay by more than $88,000. Pilot Brett McDaniel was called back an incredible 150% of the time – he was called back on more occasions than he worked at regular pay -- boosting his compensation by $125,000.

Port piloting consists of boating out to ships waiting to enter the harbor, climbing a rope ladder to the deck and then standing on the bridge to provide local knowledge, including advice on currents and navigational hazards, as the vessel is steered through the congested waterway to the dock. The process is reversed when ships leave the harbor.

Either way, it typically takes about two hours in the Port of Los Angeles, from the time the pilot leaves the station, on a pier at the end Signal Street in San Pedro, to the time he returns, port records show.

The work schedule for pilots in Los Angeles contrasts sharply with those at other West Coast ports.

Pilots in San Francisco, Seattle and the neighboring port of Long Beach are not government employees and they don’t work on an hourly basis. Instead, they’re on call for a week or two at a time, supervising ships in rotating order. The routine provides continuity for the ports, according to industry officials, and the predictability of large ship movements ensures there’s time for pilots to eat, sleep and relax between assignments.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, has pilots work 12-hour shifts that change during the peak shipping traffic hours, virtually guaranteeing that some pilots will be required to work overtime.