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# Voters deny pay raise and benefits to rent control board
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/voters-deny-pay-raise-and-benefits-to-rent-control-board/
- Published: 2002-11-06T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:52:13.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Daily Press staff*

Members of the rent control board hoping for their first raise in more than two decades likely awoke with disappointment this morning.

Measure GG was defeated by Santa Monica voters on Tuesday 14,888 to 9,854 votes. That means the seven members of the rent control board will remain the only elected officials in Santa Monica without a raise in more than 20 years and without health benefits.

Measure GG would have doubled the rent control board members’ salaries from $75 per meeting to $150 per meeting. In addition, the seven board members’ health benefits would have been covered by the city’s insurance policy Supporters of Measure GG said there would have been no effect on the city’s general fund or on the amount that tenants and landlords are charged. The money, they said, would have come internally from the rent control board’s budget, though estimates of the exact cost of providing health insurance were vague.

Critics of the measure said that’s because the board didn’t want to tell voters how much their pay raise and health insurance would cost them. And, furthermore, they said once those costs were defined, it would be unclear where the money to pay them was going to come from.

Supporters say the measure’s critics were making a mountain out of a molehill when it came to the increased costs. They say that at 15 meetings a year, each member would have made $2,250 at the higher wage, and that the insurance costs could have been supported by the existing fees.

The rent control board was created by an initiative approved by Santa Monica voters in 1979\. Since then the board has met roughly twice a month to help regulate apartments that fall under the city’s rent control laws.

Annual “registration fees” are charged to landlords and tenants of the city’s estimated 28,000 rent controlled units to pay for rent control staff and the commission, which allows them to be financially independent of the city’s general fund.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 6, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110602.pdf?ref=smdp.com)