Supervisors Should Heed DeYoung's Call For Countywide Vote On Pension Hikes

I support Pat Bates for Supervisor and have been pretty tough on Cassie DeYoung on this blog.

Nonetheless, that should not detract from the fact DeYoung is the first county candidate (as far as I am aware) to advance this particular (and excellent) idea for restraining the inherent tendency of government employee pension systems to increase in generosity and cost: putting public pension hikes to a countywide vote.

In her Sept. 12 mail piece, DeYoung stated:

Public employee unions are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect candidates to the Board of Supervisors. These same Supervisors vote for pensions and benefits packages for the employee unions. It's no wonder our County pension and healthcare system is 3.7 billion dollars in debt. My solution is to require a vote of the people on any further increases in County pension benefits."

DeYoung isn't alone on this issue. The OC Register called for similar reform in this November 2005 editorial:

General-obligation bonds require voter approval. Retroactive pension-benefit increases should, too. San Francisco, which is both a city and a county, requires it, and its plans are fully funded. Evidently, "conservative" Orange County can learn from "liberal" San Francisco.

San Francisco is as liberal a city as one could imagine. Since such a policy forms part of the city-county's basic law, it's hard to characterize it as anti-labor. The government unions are confident in the reasonableness of any future demands for making their pension plans more generous, they shouldn't fear seeking the approval of the taxpayers.

The Board of Supervisors ought to give serious consideration to this reform and at the very least put it on the ballot as a charter amendment, and kudos to Cassie DeYoung for inserting it into the public debate.

Comments

Yea, great idea.

Let's assume the public needs to approve pension benefits for County employees.

Question: Who is the public the gets to decide?

Does a resident of ORANGE CITY get to vote on the pension benefit of a COUNTY employee that doesn't work in ORANGE CITY?

Question: Who pays for the pension benefit IF the public decides to increase the benefit?

Suppose the Board of Supervisors negotiates a contract with a county union that includes a salary increase - an increase that takes into account the fact that it fully uses all the funds available for salary/benefit payments in this hypothetical time period.

When the voters increase the cost of the pension beneift - how does the Board of Supervisors pay for it?

Do they raise taxes or do they cut services?

(something they avoid when the negotiate a full salary/benefit package)

Finally, the system in San Francisco doesn't work. The voters have turned down lots of pension increases for the city employees. Why?

One main reason is that a majority of voters in San Francisco are RENTERS and have no vested interest in the quality of public services rendered in the city.

If the city employees aren't paid well - they could care less. The majority are temporary residents of the city and will be moving one when they can. The minority who care are outvoted by those that do not care.

As said before, if Cassie DeYoung cannot make a decision or cannot get others to work with her on public policy - why would we need her as a Supervisor?

"Public employee unions are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect candidates to the Board of Supervisors"

Jubal,

Talk about rewriting history. Public unions probably didn't spend one dime in electing the four Republican supervisors.

Don't blame public unions for doing what every worker in the private sector tries to get from his employer---Every worker wants to earn good wages and benefits for their efforts.

If the Republican supervisors approved an unrealistic benefits to county workers and retirees than that's on them and their constituents. They failed their consitiuents or their constituents failed when they voted for them.

Look in the mirror buddies, don't look at public unions who are just playing "U.S. Business" capitalism.

[redperegrine]

"Look in the mirror buddies, don't look at public unions who are just playing "U.S. Business" capitalism."

Nope. Capitalism is about choice. Public unions are about deprivation of choice.

"Nope. Capitalism is about choice. Public unions are about deprivation of choice."

You should notice that I had in quotation marks "U.S. Business"

Yes, true capitalism is about choice but look around the private sector and tell me there choice. So I'll assume you blieve that Microsoft and other big business(or any other business for that matter) care about maintaining a competitors choice for their products. That's nuts and not reality.

Anon: 8:57 p.m.

You need to work on your reading comrpehension skills. I didn't write that passage. It's a quote from Cassie DeYoung's mail piece -- as the indentation and italicization make clear. Direct your criticism accordingly.

09/17/2006

I'm apologize for my reading comprehension. I assumed that you included the quote "Public employee unions are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect candidates to the Board of Supervisors" so to justify DeYoungs argument that we should now adopt some sort of direct-democracy for O. C. budgetary matters.

Let's just get rid of all elected officials and do the direct democracy on everything.

I prefer representational democracy.

It's all of those failed consituents responsibility to throw out those Republican supervisors who gave away the bank. Unfortunately, it not gonna happen when rich candidates and political consultants are allowed to re-write history and use it as a basis for for furthering their idiotic argument.