Officials in Glendale and elsewhere are using various means to address deficits caused by falling revenues, rising benefit and pension obligations, and other unanticipated problems (why were they unanticipated?). Last week, council members in Glendale imposed a compensation contract on city employees. Tonight they will vote on a water rate hike the News-Press calls “unpopular.”

In letters published in yesterday’s Glendale News-Press, Harry Zavos questions GWP’s investment in smart meters while basic infrastructure is in disrepair, while Bob Getts urges the city council to stop GWP transfers to the general fund. Did the promise of federal stimulus funds tempt Glendale to incur unnecessary costs at this time to install controversial new technology? Do GWP water revenues need to be transferred to cover increased employee benefit and pension costs?

City councils in Glendale and the city of Sierra Madre will both vote tonight on water rate increases. In Sierra Madre, the issue is keeping up with payments on a municipal water bond, and there as here, the rate proposal is unpopular.

Employees’ union president Craig Hinkley: “I hope the state passes a law that says that every upper level manager and their staff has to resign for one day, and take that Second Tier, because if its good enough for the workers in your city who deliver the services to your citizens, it ought to be good enough for them.”

Comments from City Manager Jim Starbird: “We need to address the pension issue from a structural standpoint…It is going to be too costly and we can’t support those costs given our revenue structure. We are looking forward this year to a 4 to 5 percent increase in both our safety and nonsafety retirement costs, a $4-$5 million cost in our general fund.”

City council member Laura Friedman: “As much as you all deserve the pensions you get, the public pension system was never set up to create a different class of residents than the people the public sector serves…We are doing the best we can to preserve what you have, but we can’t do it at the expense of the residents you serve, and that’s the position we’re in right now.”

Speakers, city staff, and city council comments can be viewed on the video archive (begin at 2 hours, 10 minutes).

Every taxpaying citizen, including the hard-working employees of the city of Glendale, should enjoy retirement security and health care that doesn’t deplete their savings, but the politicians who guaranteed these benefits to public sector workers got things backwards. Taxpayers should be first in line to receive services and benefits, and shouldn’t foot the bill for benefits they can’t receive themselves.

More on public sector benefits and pensions under the Sunroom Desk Paperweight:

Employees’ contract looks like a fair shake, Glendale News-Press, Saturday, November 6, 2010

Pension Tsumani – daily links to articles and posts on “the approaching wave of pension debt”

The Glendale News-Press weekend editorial, A Tale of Two Districts, contrasts recent Glendale Community College staff concessions with the Glendale Teachers Association’s refusal to accept reduced benefits. I heard the GTA president speak last week, and was struck by the union’s lack of awareness. Almost everyone else these days is making do with fewer health benefits and paying more for health insurance.

Class War: How public servants became our masters shows (with most examples in California) that benefits and pensions allocated to public employee unions are more generous than private-sector packages, often politically motivated, and clearly unsustainable.

Public Employee Unions Are Sinking California, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports the following data to back its claim -

Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reported this past week that CalSTRS is facing a $43 billion shortfall; the Orange County Register Watchdog blog continues its series on retired educators receiving more than $100,000/year in CalSTRS payments; California Pension Reform maintains a list of “top ten” CalSTRS recipients (number one gets $285,460.92 yearly); and CalPERS held a one-day forum on “ensuring future retirement security”, attended by public pension managers, union representatives, and government officials (one pension reform advocate was invited).

So many articles have been published just in the past week on this subject that they won’t all fit under the Sunroom Desk Paperweight. Pension Tsumani’s sidebar, with an extensive daily archive, is a good source for more reading on the subject.

From Patterico:

So it’s “terrorism” to hold elected officials to their word??

She “guesses” it’s about free speech, but it’s “extremely unfair”?

This is the sort of attitude we’re seeing in Sacramento. They want to do what they want to do (raise taxes ad infinitum) — and they’re so very irritated at having to deal with petty annoyances like their signed pledges, and the voters’ wishes.

And from Hot Air Blog:

There’s a lot of stupidity and tyranny locked into those few words. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, even apart from the “free speech” issues Bass casually discards. Elected politicians are accountable to the people who elect them in a free society. Politicians do not acquire lordly status when they go to the Assembly, or anywhere else.

Usually, politicians are smart enough to at least pay lip service to getting feedback from their constituents. Instead, Bass calls them “terrorists” for … what? Calling their representatives and telling them not to raise taxes even higher, in the state with the sixth-highest per capita tax burden in the nation? Expressing their opinions? Telling politicians they won’t get their support if they vote for a tax hike? That’s democracy, not terrorism, although I’m hardly surprised that Bass can’t tell the difference.

LA Now reported on another setback to California representatives: a state court of appeals ruling last week that they can’t appropriate transportation funds to cover budget shortfalls.

Carol Platt Liebau stands up to pitches against Prop 13 and the 2/3 majority rule by batting the arguments out of the park:

Ultimately, any honest assessment of California’s plight must assign responsibility for the state’s fiscal crisis – not to the taxpayers who voted for Prop. 13 three decades ago – but to the politicians who have subsequently exploited them without mercy. Indeed, if spending had simply reflected average population growth plus the average increase in the cost of living since 1991, there would now be a $15 billion surplus. After adjusting for inflation, the state now spends nearly 20% more per capita than it did 18 years ago; even as California’s tax revenues increased by 167% during that period, state spending exploded by 189%.

And Capitol Weekly reports on Governor Schwarznegger’s proposal to reduce budget shortfalls by cutting state employee benefits and pensions – a sore subject for California taxpayers who don’t enjoy nearly the amount of health care coverage or future retiree benefits their taxes support for state workers.

Evans’ Budget Blog update today briefly describes a Democratic budget proposal that will be submitted for a vote Wednesday. Along with cuts to programs, and $2.1 billion in “revenue acceleration and fees”, it includes $1 billion in new cigarette taxes and $880 million in oil severance taxes (whatever those are). Most comments on this post pick up John and Ken’s themes: Why hasn’t state government gotten the message that voters won’t accept more taxes? Further, why won’t legislators start renegotiating employment contracts that are far more generous than most private-sector packages? Excerpt from one comment:

…as long as public employees make more money on average, with more benefits than in the private sector, we have a reasonable expectation to ask them to make sacrifices first.

There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live in the same world as the rest of us, contributing some of our salary towards medical insurance and co-pays. There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live with the same retirement plans the rest of us have (401K plans, not pensions with 90% of our salary for life).

Here is Evans’ more detailed report on the proposal.

Edited down to simple imperatives, some of the rules are easy to understand and would gain approval from most taxpayers employed in the private sector. Others are more difficult to implement, and could pose problems for the city. Here’s an edited list, to which I’ve added questions and comments in italics:

1. Rescind Memorandum of Understanding for management employees.

2. Streamline Memorandum of Understanding with respect to time off: Set a maximum number of paid days off for all vacation, holiday, sick leave, union meetings, wellness time, to 20 days off maximum. (What about maternity leave?)

3. Flatten the organizational chart to five layers.

4. Limit supervisory positions to those with 15 or more subordinates. (Why this number and not 10 or 8?)

5. Eliminate Civil Service protection for division heads and unit managers after six years. (They may not need it after six years, but what about after 16 or 26?)

6. Hold unit managers accountable to performance measures. (Who creates these performance measures?)

7. Eliminate overtime, or pay in lieu of overtime, for managers or anyone with professional designation.

8. Require safety and emergency personnel to live within 30 minutes (at peak hours) from the borders of the city. (This is discriminatory and unfair to homeowners living more than 30 minutes from Glendale.)

9. Eliminate reimbursement for further education, tuition, books, etc. (What about departments like Information Technology, which must keep staff current on the city’s hardware and software systems?)

10. Reduce the number of pay steps and the percentage increase for each step and limit pay increases to COLA.

11. Remove health, education and transportation benefits from Cost of Living Adjustments; they are already part of the Consumer Price Index.

12. Equalize health insurance coverage and contributions for all city employee levels.

13. Disallow rehiring of retired employees as consultants or temporary executives.

14. Limit benefits to less than 50% of an individual’s salary. (There may be instances where health care benefits paid out equal more than 100 percent of an individual’s salary.)

15. Set bonuses to clear standards of business unit performance; make them transparent to employees and taxpayers. (Why should public sector employees get bonuses at all? They should work in the private sector to improve an organization’s bottom line if bonuses are their goal!)

16. Limit staff meetings to less than 10% of employee hours and less than 5% for non-safety employees. (This arbitrary rule doesn’t take into account the complexities of public sector management, including the need to deal with the public regularly!)

17. Dismiss any employee who causes a loss in a court of law to an amount greater than his yearly salary. (A dismissal on grounds like these could easily result in another lawsuit!)

18. Set civil service pay at 10% below private sector and NGO average.

19. Freeze all employee pay and benefits when a recession is declared or when local unemployment reaches 7%. (Who declares the recession? Make it simpler: if revenues decrease, pay doesn’t increase.)

20. Reduce pensions greater than the per-capita income of area working adults. (Why not tie public sector pensions to private sector pensions and retirements instead?)