- are defunding the world he believes in."...
"Serious Californians, on the right and the left, know how much fiscal trouble they’re in."
"Wisconsin’s public union fight is the battle of the century in American politics. But while the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio have led the pushback, it’s possible that the public-pension battle could shift in the future to California—with or without the participation of its governor, the endlessly recyclable Jerry Brown. Even in this bluest of states,
- the ground is shaking beneath the unions.
California—a state that spent the 20th century exploding with creativity, growth and wealth—now staggers beneath a $26 billion deficit. But city officials across California, already staring into their own fiscal abyss,
- aren’t waiting for help from hapless Sacramento.
Costa Mesa, in Orange County, just fired half of its work force. Days later, Los Angeles reached a tentative deal in which workers would pay more into pension and health plans. The next day, thousands of L.A. unionists marched against an array of perceived enemies—
- Wisconsin, corporations, Republicans.
Then there’s San Francisco, about the last place in California you would expect to find an official determined to fight the financial weight of its public unions. Even legal thriller-writer Scott Turow couldn’t make this up, but the man taking on the unions in San Francisco
- is its Public Defender, Jeff Adachi.
Mr. Adachi, 52, runs an agency of lawyers who provide legal services to poor people. He is a card-carrying San Francisco Democrat. As he sees it, payments for public pensions and health care
- are defunding the world he believes in.
“I’m seen as a liberal progressive, a rage against the machine person,” he said this past week at his offices downtown. “If you care about social programs or the network of support services, you have to understand that
- pensions and benefit costs are crowding out all these services.”
As a public official, there was nothing he could do about it. So in a kind of Batman moment, Mr. Adachi as a private citizen got up an initiative last year, Proposition B, which would have required current
- workers to pay more toward pension and health-care costs.
He got financial support from a prominent local Democrat, Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital. California’s most famous living Democrat, former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, supported him. He collected 76,000 signatures. In November, Prop. B lost by 13 points beneath a mudslide of public union money. Mr. Adachi is retooling his proposition
- for another vote this November.
It’s possible to look at California as the land that time forgot, a place incapable of real reform. But it’s also possible that the stubborn pluck that built California is being rediscovered, and in unlikely places.
A few weeks ago, a small group of current and former municipal officials and taxpayer advocates in the San Francisco Bay Area convened to form
- California United for Fiscal Reform.
Its co-chairs are Mr. Adachi and Stephanie Gomes, the outspoken city council member from Vallejo, famously the largest California city to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Their first meeting this month attracted representatives from Menlo Park, Pleasanton, Contra Costa County, and Sonoma County.
“These costs are a tsunami,” says Ms. Gomes. “If we can’t rely on the state to fix it, we have to do it locally, and we have to join together,
- because the unions are joined.”
In Orange County, the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility and the Pacific Research Institute recently held a “Pension Boot Camp,” where some 175 elected officials and others heard talks such as, “
- What hasn’t Calpers told you?”
What Calpers, the state’s public-employee retirement system, has told the cities is that many of their pension payments are constitutionally mandated. That means the lead on major reform would have to come from the mercurial Gov. Brown. He talked about it in his campaign, but not much since.
High-level help for the embattled locals, however, may come from another California official, U.S. Congressman Devin Nunes. Rep. Nunes is building support for his
- Public Employee Pension Transparency Act,
which would require states and municipalities to produce a coherent picture of their pension obligations. Imagine that. The bill says that they can stay opaque if they wish, but failure to disclose would cut them off from the federal tax exemption for muni bonds.
Serious Californians know how much trouble they’re in. Last June, the Civil Grand Jury in San Francisco issued a report on pensions, “The Billion Dollar Bubble.” Its conclusion: “This report is a warning of a deepening crisis in the City’s financial condition. . . . We cannot wait.”
A report last month from the state’s respected Little Hoover Commission said that California has no choice but to take on the edifice of court decisions
- mandating pension costs to nowhere.
Every person I talked to in California about this issue, from left to right, agrees they have a common problem: Over the years, the public unions “bought” politicians from the smallest city to the state capital in Sacramento. California is a blue state all right, but it just may be that
- it is turning blue with rage at the inexorable
- destruction of its public life."
via MB Snow blog
No comments:
Post a Comment