Oakland planning worker quadrupled pay with overtime

Looking across the bay to the skyline of Oakland on Fri. Aug. 12, 2016. Oakland’s highest paid city employee last year was not the fire chief, mayor or top cop. It was a civil engineer who reviews building plans and who has long reaped one of the sweetest overtime deals in the city. less Looking across the bay to the skyline of Oakland on Fri. Aug. 12, 2016. Oakland’s highest paid city employee last year was not the fire chief, mayor or top cop. It was a civil engineer who reviews ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Oakland planning worker quadrupled pay with overtime 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Oakland’s highest-paid city employee last year was not the fire chief, mayor or top cop. It was a civil engineer who reviews building plans and who has long reaped one of the sweetest overtime deals in the city.

All told, Kenny Lau’s compensation reached $484,175, with most of it from overtime, according to data released Monday by Transparent California, a nonprofit project run by a Nevada free-market think tank.

Lau’s pay rate and compensation suggest that he would have needed to be working 16 hours a day, all 365 days of the year, to get the amount of overtime pay he received, said Robert Fellner, the group’s research director. If Lau only worked business days, he would have been clocking more than 22 hours daily.

Lau earned the fourth-highest overtime pay out of more than 550,000 California workers, according to a survey by the watchdog group. It was his second consecutive year in the spot.

The top-paid person in California cities tends to be a city manager, firefighter or police officer collecting hefty overtime bucks, making Lau an anomaly. He did not return requests for comment.

When asked how Lau, whose regular salary is $108,841, was able to accumulate so much overtime, city spokeswoman Karen Boyd said Lau does not just work on business days.

She added that fees collected through his work of processing development permits cover his salary and overtime compensation. She also said that demand for residential building permits has grown recently, giving Lau more work to do.

Over the past several years, Lau and Officer Malcolm Miller of the Oakland Police Department have been duking it out for the top city spot. In 2016, Lau made $484,175 to Miller’s $463,215. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, Miller was the top earner. He also did not respond to requests for comment.

As far back as 2002, Lau was making double the pay of then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. His boss at the time, William Claggett, told The Chronicle that Lau was popular with developers, whose fees for expediting reviews more than covered his overtime.

Four others in Oakland had compensation that soared above $400,000 last year, including City Administrator Sabrina Landreth and three Fire Department employees.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov