El Monte, California City Manager Alma Martinez arranged a $150,000 compensation raise for herself in a closed-door 2025 vote

On May 14, 2025, El Monte, California City Manager Alma Martinez arranged a closed-door City Council meeting that raised her total compensation from roughly $280,000 to nearly $430,000, according to a whistleblower complaint and a subsequent city personnel memo. The package included a 25% base-salary increase, car and education allowances, lifetime medical benefits, repayment of a Covid-era temporary salary reduction, and 18 months' severance. The agenda item reached the council with no staff report and no documentation identifying the appraiser or methodology behind it, according to whistleblower Ed Rardin, a City of El Monte code enforcement officer and union president who filed complaints with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, the FBI, and the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

The raise came as El Monte faced a roughly $5 million budget deficit and most other city employees received only 5% raises that year. Mayor Jessica Ancona, who was not part of the closed-door process, publicly called the deal a "blank check" on social media. Rardin alleges Martinez rejected the findings of an independently commissioned citywide compensation study -- which had found her salary already "at market" -- and instead solicited a separate appraisal using different comparison cities to justify the larger figure.

As of this reporting, no law-enforcement or ethics agency had taken public action on Rardin's complaint. Martinez did not respond to a request for comment.