George Rebane
Friend Bob Crabb’s 3mar12 Union cartoon above captures well the spirit and goals of Agenda21 (q.v.), and the brave new world we are being herded to pell-mell. (BTW, Bob now has his own blog which you can visit through the ‘Our Links’ panel on the right.)
And while I’m in the mood, in today’s Union there is a letter to the editor from a Conni Parker of Penn Valley, a certified binary pea brain. She congratulates fellow intellectual Nancy Eubanks in a former piece “for outlining the many government programs that work”, and puts all people into two boxes when it comes to preference in governance – those who think more government is better, and anarchists. If you happen to prefer a more limited government, then the Parker and Eubanks filters immediately assign you to the anarchist box, and ask how you’d like to drive on unpaved streets, and do without police protection – “if you don’t like government, try not having one.” Oh well …
What I really wanted to comment on is the excellent article – ‘$120 million net pension and benefit liabilities can’t be ignored’ – by CPA Dai Meagher in today’s paper. A couple of weeks ago at a Board of Supes meeting, Dai and I expressed concern about the real level of the county’s unfunded liabilities, which was already disturbing back in 2007, and 2009 when Mike McDaniel brought this up to the Supervisors.
(Unfunded liabilities are now a recognized scourge that threatens all levels of government in the nation, the result of profligate entitlement and public service pensions spending. Only the diehard and fundamentally transformed progressives deny this conclusion that is even acknowledged in socialist Europe.)
It was again pointed out to us that the county’s fisc has been prudently managed, and implied that any concern people have about the county having an unfunded liability problem is a “rural myth” propounded by ignorance of the true state of affairs. Such rumors are totally unfounded.
Well, as Dai makes clear, it turns out that they are not rumors, and the concern is indeed founded and in spades. What specifically irks me is the hubris with which both the electeds and senior staff discuss such matters with us peons. When I asked county CFO Joe Christoffel about the seemingly sanguine attitude with which the county was dealing with what looked like a financial tsunami headed toward us, his reply was that the county was making the payments required by CalPERS, and since that agency (projecting 7.75% annual portfolio growth) has not raised any red flags, therefore there is nothing to worry about.
McDaniel and I were co-authors of the 2007 SESF unfunded liabilities report, and I have been writing about my concern in these matters for the last five years. At this time, no one is accusing the current electeds of having run up the county’s obligations to what may actually be over $250M when CalPERS’ 7.75% urban myth is exploded in the new reporting standards that kick in next year as required by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB). My heartburn is that I don’t see 1) any clear acknowledgement of the problem, and therefore 2) no plan for dealing with it.
As a minimum, I want to see acknowledgement of the problem in the clear format shown above (first presented in my 26feb12 post). With that in hand, county taxpayers can make up their own minds on what questions to ask our county government, or just continue keeping their heads where the sun don’t shine.
rebanesruminations.com 
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