Under Assembly Bill 2936, the workers -- mostly heads of agencies and departments -- could get as much as 125 percent of the governor's salary, although the governor says he intends to extend the raise to only one or two officials.

Schwarzenegger doesn't take his pay. But in 2007, the salary assigned to his office is scheduled to increase to $206,500. That would mean the top administrators would qualify for as much as $258,125.

Under current law, the salaries of the top supervisors are set in state law and top out at about $138,000.

The administration said the increase was needed to attract a qualified leader at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs the troubled prison system.

The administration wasted no time in applying the new law Wednesday, announcing that the acting secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, James Tilton, would be appointed permanently, receiving a salary of $225,000.

A survey by the Department of Personnel Administration found that the chief probation officers in the state's biggest counties, who oversee far fewer workers and inmates, were being paid much more than the $131,412 salary of the state prisons chief.

The San Diego chief probation officer, for instance, gets a salary of $210,080, according to the survey.

The administration says the law was also needed to avoid the commissioner of the California Highway Patrol being paid less than some of the people he supervises.

The Republican governor initially proposed that the law cover only the head of prisons. But legislators didn't think it should apply to only one position and "asked to broaden the authority," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson. There is no plan to extend it beyond the prisons director and possibly the CHP commissioner, she said.

The provision covering the top bosses was added to the bill Aug. 24 along with a contract recently negotiated with CHP officers. It had a hearing in an Assembly committee and was approved in the last days of the legislative session, which ended Aug. 31.

The bill also included money to fulfill a just-concluded labor agreement with state managers and supervisors.

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the bill, said the measure includes safeguards against the governor handing out unwarranted pay hikes. He pointed out that it requires the administration to give the Legislature 30 days' notice if it adjusts the pay of one of the top bosses. The Legislature would have the option of refusing to include money for the increase in the budget, Ridley-Thomas said.

Although the bill was not considered until the last week of the session, he said, it got strong bipartisan support.

"If it was deemed egregious, it couldn't have been adopted," he said.

Thompson said the language was inserted in the CHP contract bill because that bill also included money for managers and supervisors. It made sense, she said, to also include a provision affecting the directors and secretaries who run departments and agencies.

"This is just where it made sense to place it," she said.

Jean Ross, director of the California Budget Project, did not quibble with the need for the bill, saying the state does have a hard time competing with local government in recruiting for some top positions. The director of the Department of Social Services, for instance, gets paid less than some county welfare directors, said Ross, whose nonpartisan organization advocates for working families.

"My concern would be more about the process and whether it was debated," she said.

The head of state prisons is one of the toughest jobs in state government, second perhaps only to the governor, said Ron Roach, a spokesman for Cal-Tax, a group that advocates against taxes it considers unnecessary.

"To weigh into that mess, who are you going to find to do that?" he asked.

But while it may make sense to spend enough to attract the right person, Roach said, "it could have been put in the governor's budget or whatever, and undergone a little more scrutiny."

By John Hill, The Sacramento Bee

September 14, 2006