LA WATCHDOG-On Tuesday, voters in the County’s Third District will determine if the Board of Supervisors will retain its “conservative approach” to balancing the budget or whether it will be controlled by the leadership of the County’s public unions who are demanding increased salaries and pension benefits for the County’s employees.
While the two candidates, Bobby Shriver and Sheila Kuehl, may have different operating styles and personalities, both are liberal / progressive Democrats who do not differ significantly on major policy issues involving healthcare, transportation, culture and the environment, public safety, the County’s jail, affordable housing, welfare and people on the margins of society.
However, there is a significant difference in how they will tackle the County’s $26 billion budget, its 105,000 employees, and its seriously underfunded pension plan.
Shriver has pledged to follow in the footsteps of the termed out Zev Yaroslavsky, the fiscally prudent Supervisor whose common sense policies reflect the County’s close call with bankruptcy almost twenty years ago when he was a rookie supervisor.
Kuehl, on the other hand, has made no such commitment, especially as it relates to increases in salaries and pension benefits for County employees. But this is not surprising given the millions that the County unions are spending to support her candidacy. This “investment” in Kuehl is accelerating during this last week of the campaign and remains unreported because of the County’s antiquated tracking system.
The proof: just look at all the junk mail and newspaper flyers that are invading our houses and apartments.
If Kuehl wins, she will join forces with Mark Ridley-Thomas, the SEIU’s $8 million man, and Hilda Solis, another union sycophant, to honor the demands of the leadership of the public unions.
But can the County afford any significant increases in salaries and pension benefits?
If the County were to bump wages by $1 an hour for every employee, the projected budget deficit would increase by about $200 million, an amount that would balloon to $250 million when mandatory pension contributions are included.
The County cannot afford to increase pension benefits as its unfunded pension liability is estimated to be about $56 billion when it is adjusted to reflect post-retirement medical benefits and a more realistic investment rate assumption.
But this is no surprise since Kuehl appears to be clueless about the sorry state of the County’s 42% funded pension system based on her remarks during the KCAL Debate on Wednesday night where she denied there was a problem with the County’s pension system.
But maybe Kuehl is right. After all, $56 billion is chump change compared to the State’s $300 to $500 billion pension shortfall that she helped create during her 14 year stint in Sacramento when she voted to expand benefits for the California Highway Patrol and other state workers.
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Over the last decade, the County has managed its finances prudently. It balanced the budget and did not have to fire or furlough its workforce, in large part because it was able to control increases in salaries, pensions, and benefits by telling its unions NO, that times were tight and the cupboard was bare.
The City of Los Angeles, on the other hand, gave away the store to its unions in 2007. When the economy soured, the City responded by offering the very expensive Early Retirement Incentive Program to 2,400 senior employees, dumped over 1.600 surplus employees onto our Department of Water and Power, furloughed numerous employees, and canned 400 workers.
This budget crunch and the projected billion dollar budget deficit forced the City to cut back on basic services, including the maintenance and repair of our streets, sidewalks, and the rest of our infrastructure.
DWP Ratepayers have also been victimized by Union Bo$$ d’Arcy as he has extracted a $250 million a year IBEW Labor Premium out of the City Council as payback for his generous campaign contributions to Mayor Villaraigosa, a Kuehl supporter, and his cronies on the City Council.
Some of us may not agree with the policies of Shriver or Kuehl.
But we can agree that new Board of Supervisors must continue the Board’s current policy of a “conservative approach” to the budget that seeks to “maintain a stable budgetary outlook in an uncertain fiscal environment.”
We cannot allow the County to engage in financial folly like the City did during the Villaraigosa era. That is why we must reject the public unions’ attempt to hijack the Board of Supervisors and jeopardize the financial health and bond rating of the County.
That is why I support Bobby Shriver for Supervisor.
(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee, The Ratepayer Advocate for the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, and a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at: [email protected].)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 88
Pub: Oct 31, 2014
