Saturday, 12 June 2010 00:00
Written by Tim Caughron
If members of the Bakersfield City Council and the Kern County Board of Supervisors aren't up to their jobs, fine. Get out.
Then maybe we can find some serious, prepared people willing to deal with the nitty gritty hard work of managing public employee pay and benefits.
Instead, the taxpayers got a lot of huffing and puffing from both bodies last week.
When the dust settled, council members had dropped pension reform in the laps of voters and Supervisors plopped a $15 million budget shortfall on the heads of their employees.
Both could have been working fairly and honestly with their employee groups over the last few years of this recession to achieve greater savings in numerous ways.
But, eh, that's real work. And, of course, not nearly as much political hay can be made by working together and finding consensus.
To recap, the Bakersfield City Council voted to put an initiative on the ballot that would change the city's public safety employee retirement benefit formula. Only Irma Carson and Sue Benham voted against it, recognizing -- and rightly so -- that changing employee benefits is clearly the job of the council, not voters.
"Plus, I don't like the idea of binding future councils," Benham told me.
The initiative, which likely will be on the November ballot, would lower retirement benefits for all new public safety employees to a maximum 2 percent of their salary at age 50 (now 3 percent at 50) and require them to pay their full contribution to the system for their entire career.
Any change to that, up or down, would have to go before voters again.
Zack Scrivner, who introduced the initiative, said tying the hands of future councils is "an added layer of taxpayer protection."
As for the present, he said, the initiative, if passed, will save Bakersfield millions in the future and that it has been the unions, not the city, dragging their feet as finances tanked.
If saving money was truly the object, however, the council could have imposed conditions on the police union months ago, changing the pension formula for new hires to 3 at 55.
Scrivner says he now believes even 3 at 55 is too expensive, though that has been the city's only offer for the last three years.
No doubt 3 at 50 is too lucrative. Even the unions know it's going away. There are lots of ways to skin that cat, however.
And both the city police and fire unions have been offering ways to reduce costs immediately by paying more into the system, foregoing raises, or having raises applied to retirement costs. Last time they were at the table, firefighters asked for zero raises.
No dice.
Perhaps I'm too suspicious, but it does occur to me that the initiative's timing is interesting. Scrivner first wanted it to come before voters June 8. He pulled it back and it will now come up in November, coincidentally when he may be in a tough run-off election for the 2nd District Supervisor's seat and could use a sexy issue to schlep around.
Over at the county, unions watched Supervisors' budget negotiations last week with mouths understandably agape.
Pension costs are unsustainable, Supervisors said over and over.
Then they drew a bright red line in the budget and expect to meet it by asking unions to agree to cut pay by 13.5 percent and have everyone, regardless of hire date, pay their full contribution into retirement and 20 percent toward health insurance premiums.
I say the unions were stunned because most had already started moving in those directions.
New hires have been paying 20 percent toward health insurance and their full retirement contribution for years now, county fire union president Derek Robinson said.
The probation, fire and Sheriff's command unions agreed to have their full membership, not just new hires, pay 10 percent of health premiums when they paid nothing before. Fire also has its full membership paying 1 percent toward their retirement contribution.
No, the percentages aren't huge. But the philosophical change is.
"We were already halfway there," he said. "And we figured we'd get further bit by bit. Now they're taking this hard line and people dig in."
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents 6,000 county employees has also had new hires paying 100 percent retirement and 20 percent health. Union president Chuck Waide told me SEIU workers change rapidly so it won't be long before a majority are under the new terms.
"Yes, I am angry about it," he said of Supervisors' actions last week. "They asked us to make changes and we did. They expect us to keep our word but the same doesn't apply to them.
"They couldn't balance the budget so they expect the employees to do it."
Supervisor Mike Rubio said this is no different than the process used in years past.
"What's troubling is, we've never been faced with cutting this amount before," he said.
He agreed that employee unions have begun to change attitudes toward longstanding perks like health insurance and retirement benefits. But, he said, the unions characterizing Supervisors' actions last week as "holding a gun to their head is not constructive to finding a solution."
Neither is holding a gun to their head.
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail
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The Bakersfield Californian | Saturday, Jun 12 2010 05:01 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Jun 12 2010 05:01 PM
