.
.
.
Not having a “transom” as Jerbal does, I went ahead and checked my e-mail inbox, and I liked what I found: A new battle-cry from my favorite HB councilman Joe Shaw – here it is:
Put Common-Sense Reform First!
Dear Friend,
City revenues in Huntington Beach still haven’t fully recovered from the Great Recession.
Recently the Huntington Beach City Council asked our police officers to help us close our budget gap, even though their contract does not expire until 2012.
They stepped up, and offered to do two things.
First, they will contribute another half a million dollars a year towards their pensions. Secondly, they will waive a benefit they are now receiving that will save the City another $350,000 a year.
Each of our 237 police officers will take home about $3,500 a year less than they would make under their current contract.
If the City Council rejects this contract, we will have rejected nearly $3 million in concession savings over the next two years. Recently, the council narrowly rejected $1.2 million in concessions for our Firefighters, including creating a second tier pension program.
A few of our council members want to reject these immediate savings and demand more, following the aggressive tactics that have turned Costa Mesa into a battleground.
We can’t afford to wait.
We have seen what has happened in Costa Mesa, where experienced police officers are now leaving for other agencies at a rate of one per week. Costa Mesa is spending more on consultants, public relations, and attorneys while they lose police officers.
Responsible Pension Reform
All seven council members are seeking pension reform in our negotiations with our employees. The council recently heard from our pension expert John Bartels, and we endorsed his recommended goals:
Short term: Work on employees paying full member contribution, 9% for safety and 8% for non-safety, the maximum allowed by law.
Mid term: Move towards more shared risk, lower compensation, and a two-tier pension program.
Long Term: We have longterm goals of getting safety employees to 2@50, and non-safety employees to 2@60 or 2@55.
We are making progress towards all of these goals.
If the council rejects this contract, our police officers will receive their previously negotiated raises, further impacting our budget and we will be no closer to pension reform than we are today. Please support gradual, common sense reform, and reject Costa Mesa style politics for Huntington Beach.
Joe Shaw
joe.shaw@surfcity-hb.org
714-858-0599
This guy sounds like a rational thinker. Hope he can sell his ideas.
Joe Shaw is smart enough to not jeopardize the financial integrity of Huntington Beach the way a few unethical and shady council members in Costa Mesa have been doing. Costa Mesa has a balanced budget and revenues are up. It was never in the dire straits they wanted you to believe. It was a manufactured budget crisis that got all the news. It seemed as though their original plan was to file for bankruptcy to get out of contracts they didn’t want to pay. When that didn’t work they figured they could out source everything to contractors that hire illegal immigrants to save a few bucks. Costa Mesa has had really good leaders in the past. Unfortunately we now have two new guys that are messing everything up.
Can you save a few bucks by using illegal immigrant labor? Sure, but it’s unethical. People should receive a fair wage. Plus, all employees should pay their fair share of taxes.
Unfortunately we now have two new guys that are messing everything up.
…and two mindless followers, otherwise there wouldn’t be a majority screwing things up.
I have advocated that to the extent that public sector benefit and wage costs are unaffordable in these tough economic times, the problem can be managed by laying out the facts at the negotiation table and negotiating for reductions. Council member Shaw is a breath of fresh air by seeing it that way as well. Real leaders display leadership, not my way or the highway. The my way or the highway types are like shooting stars – a big burst of energy that explodes and then fades away. Congratulations to Mr. Shaw for displaying leadership. Maybe he should consider running for the Assembly or County Supervisor?
HB letter writers should focus especially on Mayor Joe Carchio, the most reasonable of the four councilmen who voted against the firefighters’ giveback. The other three – led by Don Hansen – are hardcore anti-public-employee zealots controlled by Scott Baugh, who would like to compete with the Riggy contingent in Costa Mesa for how draconian they can be.
Do the right thing, Mayor Carchio! Don’t be a puppet like Mayor Monahan.
ALSO see this withering article by Gus Ayer on our sister blog Surf City Voice: Why Huntington Beach Shouldn’t Partner With Costa Mesa.
http://www.surfcityvoice.org/2011/07/commentary-why-huntington-beach-shouldnt-partner-with-costa-mesa/
Sanity in city hall. What a concept.
Good work Joe Shaw. Keep us free from the Costa Mesa Cancer.
H.B. Resident
This is what smart city leaders and unions have been doing all over the state, either renegotiating contracts or negotiating new contracts that move existing employees to contributing a higher share of their pension, agreeing to lower tiers for new employees, and preserving service levels.
I like the Fire Authority model, which was also picked up by Mayor Ralph Rodriguez in La Palma. In that model, employees pick up a larger percentage of their pension every year in a multi-year contract, and only get raises if revenues increase to support them.
This is what had been happening in Costa Mesa before new Council members Righeimer and Mensinger pushed for a scorched earth tactic.
The cost of employee pensions is a serious problem, but it’s also a problem that can be improved steadily and slowly. The calamitous predictions of the crisis mongers have been proven to be wildly exagerated as CalPERS earning did, in fact recover dramatically from their tumultuous losses.
Mayor, could you write us an article on how well those pension investment funds are doing, and how that discredits and de-necessitates the scorched-earth tactics of councils like CM?
Just thinking about that, Vern. Unfortunately, it’s one of those boring articles, with a headline like, “Actuaries live dangerously, values revert to mean, for now.” Pension costs are still a very serious long-term problem, not a tsunami, and we all need to keep working on fixing the problems every year, every employee contract.
Sadly, the damage done by the banksters and ceonistas hasn’t been undone, and the Republicans’ plan to solve unemployment by cutting jobs works about as well as solving a revenue problem by cutting taxes.
Public employee pension funds, because they are broadly invested in the private economy, have benefited from the same badly skewed economy that is rigged to benefit the banksters and ceonistas.
My biggest criticism of the Costa Mesa Uber Alles guys was that their methods didn’t actually solve the problems that they saw as crises. They lied about the extent of the problem, and then they were too stupid to see that their actions didn’t actually make anything any better. Laying off a bunch of employees didn’t make their long-term PERs obligations go away. They just pissed away a lot of money on lame-ass attorneys and overpriced consultants while losing all the employees they really wanted to keep.
Joe is what all government needs. He is doing an outstanding job!
HB would be smart not to make any deals with Costa Mesa which would compromise their sovereignty; Especially with the current CM administration. I say this because I have lived in CM since 1964 and, I have never seen a city government so out of touch with its employees and citizens. The CM council is making our city the “poor cousin” of the county.