After years of effort and prodding from Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters (and a looming budget shortfall) the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors finally tackled a multi-million dollar budget problem by eliminating costly “extra” benefits for future retirees.
It’s a start — but it’s not the only budget busting pension issue: Sacramento County has nearly $950 Million in pension obligation bonds that have to be serviced from the General Fund – at the same time they’re facing significant budget cuts.
The scary thing is, Sacramento is not alone – all across California, bloated and under-funded (how did they manage to do both?) pensions have spawned a financial monster; and with few exceptions, no one is dealing with it. Public employee retiree pensions and benefits threaten to swamp already stretched budgets – throwing taxpayers into a fiscal nightmare. It’s the monster under the bridge everyone tries to pretend is not there…
**There is more – click the link**
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
This is a good column, but it reveals the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
Tab Berg says “It is important to separate public safety from other public employees. If you strap on a badge and a gun to face down criminals, or if you don a leather helmet and a fire hose to run into burning buildings; then we should pay you more – including healthcare, retirement, disability and survivor benefits. There are no equivalent jobs in the private sector and these are not jobs that should be awarded to the lowest bidder.” What ridiculous nonsense! Mr. Berg needs to go back and take remedial high school economics.
EVERY public job should be awarded to the lowest bidder who can do the job. Every deviation from this rule robs the taxpayers, rewards favoritism and corruption, and distorts the free market.
The laws of economics apply just as well to prison nurses and prison guards as they do to civil engineers and snow plow operators.
Furthermore, the distinction between “public safety” employees and everyone else serves no real purpose. It sounds good to people who aren’t familiar with state employment, but it makes no sense in practice. Many skilled Caltrans equipment operators and prison nurses, for example, are much more likely to be injured in the line of work and more difficult to hire and retain than “public safety” employees like dental records inspectors or firemen. Attempting to divide employees into categories of public safety and non-public safety is arbitrary, inherently unfair, and pointless. Providing extra benefits to some employees without economic justification only encourages every other union to demand the same benefits – as they have!
In closing, I should add that Tab Berg also ignores one of the most critical arguments against overly-generous retirement benefits for state workers: MOST employees would trade these benefits for less expensive salary increases right now. So far, our Nanny State has made the policy decision that current and future employees should not be allowed to trade (hypothetical) future benefits for current income, regardless of individual family circumstances. That has to stop.