California’s annual payment toward pension obligations ballooned to $3.7 billion in the current fiscal year from $300 million when the bill was enacted. Some cities that adopted the highway-patrol pension plan later cited those costs for contributing to their bankruptcy filings.

Pay Increases

Davis and the Legislature also agreed to labor contracts that gave 164,000 state workers pay increases of 4 percent in 1999 and again in 2000. Those contracts cost the state an extra $1.3 billion within a year, according to the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office.

There were more to come.

After technology stocks plummeted in 2000, cutting tax revenue, Davis asked state workers to postpone additional raises.

In lieu of immediate increases, Davis and the California Legislature agreed to link highway patrol pay to an average of the five biggest law enforcement agencies in the state. The result: escalating raises that came due after Davis left office. Officers’ pay rose 2.7 percent in fiscal 2004, 12.1 percent in fiscal 2005 and 5.6 percent and 5.7 percent in the following years, according the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Aiding Recruitment

The pay boosts were needed to help bring more officers to the agency at a time it couldn’t fill all its cadet positions, said Jon Hamm, chief executive officer of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the union for CHP officers.

“At the time we accomplished our biggest gains, I actually felt I was losing the recruitment war,” Hamm said in an e- mailed statement. “I think it is clear that when our biggest gains were negotiated I did not feel they were ‘excessive;’ in fact, almost the opposite was true.”

The wage increases help explain disparities in the data compiled by Bloomberg in which many California highway patrol officers now earn much more than counterparts in other states. For example, 45 California officers earned at least $200,000 in 2011, compared with nine in other states -- five in Pennsylvania and four in Illinois, according to the data. While more than 5,000 California troopers made $100,000 or more in 2011, only three in North Carolina did, the data show.

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