TCA Bonus System a Turnoff

I am outraged by your Feb. 6 report on the proposed Transportation Corridor Agencies bonus program.

The idea of clerical employees being eligible for a bonus of a meager 5% of their salary and an executive being eligible for a whopping 50% bonus is ludicrous. Another example of how the rich continue to get richer.

Wouldn’t a bonus based on actual savings be fairer? Or a fixed percentage for all? Or just a flat bonus amount? Surely the agency will reconsider this absurdly inequitable distribution of incentives.

JOAN S. PETTY, Newport Beach

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The approval by a tollway board committee on Feb. 4 of cash bonuses for tollway officials ranging from 5% to 50% of annual salary could set a costly precedent.

Whereas “pay for performance” is fashionable in the private sector, such plans are usually linked to customer-focused goals which are not always easy to achieve. In the government sector, this plan could be a cash gift unless linked to similar goals which are central to the tollway agency’s core mission.

My trepidation results from a recent visit to the FasTrak Service Center in Irvine to pick up a transponder device. After waiting for five minutes at the window while employees drifted by, each transporting a document from place A to B, I had that familiar feeling one gets in any other state or federal bureaucracy: The employees, secure in their sinecure of lifetime employment, know that they can ignore those they are paid to serve.

Finally, a kind soul came to the window, only to inform me that they would be glad to take my application and inform me when a transponder comes in, six to eight weeks later!

Apparently, the officials predicting tollway usage were optimists, while the ones procuring transponders were pessimists.

MICHAEL L. COMER, Irvine