Ruminations – 8sep2009

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Ruminations – 8sep2009

08 September 2009

George Rebane

Obama continues making “Depression mistakes”. Even selected media in Great Britain are beginning to notice (here). Part of the problem about this wool over the country’s eyes is the myth that FDR did anything other than draw out and deepen the misery of the country during his first two terms. WW2 was the only 'public works' program that worked.

Hereabouts there are still ill-informed folks who continue to have no clue on how the public pension process works, and no desire to get educated. They claim, for instance, that local jurisdictions are the wrong level at which to address the problem; instead we should be taking this up at the state level. No matter that it is the jurisdictions that set the pension multipliers, and allow/abet gaming the system through job transfers, overtime, purchasing extra time-in-job, and giving late-career raises/promotions. Locally this has been pointed out by Mike McDaniel in his SESF report (download here) on unfunded liabilities, and, most recently, detailed in my August Union column. The ignorance of some former community information gatekeepers about all this is still surprising.

The futility of attempting to centrally plan the operation of large scale systems, like the US of A, is well known to RR readers. However, so-called smart people are still to blame for attempting to pull of the next version off a centrally planned state. Here is another view of this from down under.

Van Jones “smeared” with truth. But even the ‘we report, you decide’ Fox News can’t shoot straight on the Van Jones resignation. This weekend they kept asking the dumb question ‘Was the White House sufficiently thorough in their vetting of the 31 (latest count) czars who directly report to the President?’ Of course it was thorough – the White House has told us that they hired these people specifically because of their expressed socio-political philosophies, and the public stances they took on issues before being employed in the administration. The correct question that seems to evade these hotshot journalists is ‘What objectives does the White House have for America that requires Obama’s administration to have such people in the saddle?’

Posted in Current Affairs, Nevada County, Our Country

7 responses to “Ruminations – 8sep2009”

Steve Enos

08 September 2009

George, I agree that public pension’s and benefit packages are a real big issue that must be addressed. But let’s look at an example of how we got here and who is responsible.
George, would you agree the Nevada County and Placer County boards of supervisors have historically been dominated by and generally under the control of Republicans? Republicans have had the majority control of these two BOS boards for decades. This has been the past norm and is currently the norm.
George, I bet you will also agree that on a statewide level the state employee unions have held a lot of influence over who is and who isn’t elected. Would you agree that state employee unions leverage their member’s votes, endorsements and their political war chests to influence who is elected and what these folks do once elected?
So let’s look at one of the biggest “winners” in the public pension and benefits payouts game. This would be the Sheriff Department employees of Nevada and Placer counties.
The Placer County Deputy’s got a 6.3 percent raise last year. 30 years on the job gets them retirement benefits that are 90 percent of their end pay. After some overtime padding and “promotions” in their last couple of years they can pump the last few years of on the job income to inflate their monthly retirement payment. The County also pays between 93 to 100% of their health costs.
Recently the Placer Deputy’s union members voted No to adjust their benefits. They voted No to reducing the county share of health care costs to 90 percent and No to a 5 percent contribution requirement to their own retirement system.
How did this happen and how does it continue? Well it happened because the supervisors voted to supply these benefits over the years. Let’s look at which supervisor candidates received the political endorsements of the deputy employee unions in Placer and Nevada County, which were elected and which voted yes to the benefits once elected or in some cases re-elected. These endorsements, campaign contributions and the law enforcement political photo op’s used in the candidates mailers show a clear pattern of practice.
Keep the Deputy Sheriff employee union members happy, get their endorsement and get elected. Seems this is like how the big state employee unions work to exercise control over who is and who isn’t elected on the state level.
So George, where’s the screaming at the Nevada County Board of Supervisors for their actions? What happened to the issue of accountability? Who cast the votes to provide these big benefits to the Nevada County Sheriff’s Department employees? Well the majority of the needed votes came for our local Republican, self-proclaimed conservative board of supervisors.
Before anyone starts talking about how law enforcement officers put their lives at risk and earn anything and everything they can get in the way of benefits, please understand that I was a deputy sheriff and a federal drug enforcement officer. I don’t have a nice law enforcement retirement or health benefit package from this work, but that’s not why I did this work.
George, would you agree that while they risk their lives to keep us safe the benefit packages, the overtime padding in the last year or two, big sick leave and vacation rollovers and payouts and the double dipping after early retirement is a bit excessive?
So I hope that those raising these issues here in Nevada County hold the past and present board of supervisors accountable and hold these Republican, self identified conservatives accountable during the discussion. I hope the same standards are applied to the local county deputy sheriff’s unions that are applied to the state employee unions by the “conservatives”.

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George Rebane

08 September 2009

Steve, your points are well taken, and reinforce many of the same points I have made in my Union columns and RR posts. I don’t have the breakdown data as to which BoSs over the years exercised the prerogatives I have listed to increase the county’s unfunded liabilities. I suspect that both parties of these ‘non-partisan’ boards have done their share. I am hoping that the request by Stan Meckler during today’s public comments at the BoS meeting will be honored. Stan requested that the BoS would place an explanation of the county’s unfunded liabilities on the Board’s 22 September agenda. At that time the county’s staff, probably led by county CFO Joe Cristoffel?, would lay this out for us, and make clear to all what role the local electeds (at the county and city levels) have in building up future retirement benefits liabilities for their jurisdictions.
This afternoon I was advised by a RR reader that Supervisor Nate Beason has already launched what appears to be a ‘duck and cover’ response on Jeff Pelline’s blog. Nate’s basic point is that ‘Sacramento made us do it, so go talk to them’, and then he changes the subject to defend hills not assaulted, possibly, in the bargain, accusing Mike McDaniels and me of “demagoguery” (!!?) in bringing this to public attention. (I am on record numerous times commending county administration and the work of county staff to the extent that I have been publicly called a “shill” of BoS.) If my interpretation of Nate’s denial of BoS responsibility is correct, I would be happy to contend that view with Nate and any representative from CalPERS in a public debate.

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Michael McDaniel

08 September 2009

I am told that Nate conceded that you and I gave the BOS a warning over a year ago regarding the pension crisis, and YET HE HAS DONE NOTHING (WAS $50million in red, now $87million).
Nate could have:
1-Brought in an outside consultant (free via non-profit like Howard Jarvis Tax Association) during employee contract negotiations. As it sits now, NOONE is at the negotiating table for the tax payer.
2-sponsored a petition to the legislators in Sacramento regarding changes he believes need to happen
3- Asked to extend retirement ages for new hires
4- asked CalPERS to decrease the expected rate of return down to a realisitc ROR (say 4.5% instead of 7.75% net of fees)
5-Increasing the probation periods before new employees become eligible
6-Decreasing the cost of living adjustment to existing plans and new hires.
7- read the report there are more…
George, we did our part. It is NOT every day that politicians get this much lead time on a problem- it IS every day when they botch their opportunity to be the leader they sold themselves to be on the campaign trail.

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Michael McDaniel

08 September 2009

Steve Enos, I agree that we do need to hold ALL our elected officials to the fire (repubs and dems). Even though some are new to the crowd-they are self proclaimed leaders and problem solvers. I think it is only fair that we wait and see what answers the BOS gives us tax payers on Sept 22. I expect that they will have an itemized list of actions taken regarding this problem (since they were made aware of it over 12 months ago) or else they will be “tarred and feathered.”
One of the biggest problems with the CalPERS system is that their reporting is 2 years old! Which means the current market crash (stocks/real estate etc) will not be reflected to BOS until October of 2010! This scheduling fact makes it easy for BOS to pass the buck forward to the next BOS’s. Ponzi schemes are always engineered so that only the last participants get caught holding the proverbial bag.

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DaveC

09 September 2009

And still, the BOS (and city governments) need to be held accountable for any increases in retirement percentage factors, as well as new employees entering CALPERS. Future negotiations with city/county unions and non union employees should include a defined contribution plan.

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Russ Steele

09 September 2009

Replies to the FUE on the FUE’s blog by Nate Beason on the UL issue.
Nate Beason Says:
Jeff-I didn’t see Mike and George’s comments taking me to task for mine, although their’s and Mr. Enos’ were related to me. (I think he means relayed)
What the three don’t seem to understand is that the BOS in 2002, composed of 4 “Progressives” and 1 GOP, signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that, inter alia, increased the Miscellaneous Employees retirement mulitple to 2.7 as a phase of the MOU.

What! According to Steve Enos, it was all the Conservative Republican’s fault.
The BOS as it was constituted in 2005, none of whom were on the Board in 2002, took ministerial (administrative) action to implement that phase of the MOU put in place in 2002. The BOS could have refused implementation and then the county would have been sued for breach of contract.
Wow, they could have done something, and the law suit could have exposed the real cost of the agreement and they could have demonstrated it was unsustainable. Law suits are not always bad. I am sorry, rolling over is not leadership. But, hey no skin off their political backs, they will be long gone when the bill comes due.
…..
Hope this helps clarify a complex issue..
Nate Beason
Well not really. It demonstrates a lack of understanding how the CalPERS systems works.

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Steve Enos

10 September 2009

Always nice to have Russ attempt to put words in my mouth and take things out of context.

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