NCT A plea for pension reform
You know the pension tsunami is getting close to the shore when the mainstream media are filled with hard-hitting stories about the coming crisis, such as the front-page Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee article last Sunday documenting the way huge pension costs for retired public employees "threaten California cities (and) counties."

SacBee The Public Eye: Pension promises threaten California cities, counties
This year, the city of Roseville will spend about as much to fund its pension plan as it does on parks and recreation.

San Luis Obispo County will spend five times as much on pensions as it does prosecuting criminals.

And Stanislaus County's pension costs will be nearly double its $23.5 million general fund budget deficit...

A city could play accounting games by moving regular staff to one of the city's proprietary agencies. The proprietary agencies charge consumers at a rate consistent with the cost of delivering the product to the ratepayer. The agency is under no obligation to constrain costs or maximize efficiency.

There is no built in mechanism to watch out for abuse of water districts/department and their ratepayers. Ratepayers' only real option is to file Prop 218 protests at the next water rate increase.

According to an OurLA investigation, the City of Los Angeles is balancing part of its general fund budget by shifting 70 workers to the water department. In doing so, some staff automatically jump to a different pay scale and get a 40% raise.

During the last Encinitas budget adoption the City of Encinitas quietly transferred 3 city employees to the San Dieguito Water District.

UT Council and Manager Up for Raise

Dalager and Houlihan voted to raise Council Member's salaries 10%. The vote to raise City Manager Cotton's compensation 11% (to $242,640) has been delayed until March 10th.

UT Council to consider pay increase.
The council also will consider giving Cotton an 11 percent raise, which would bring his compensation, including wages and deferred compensation, to $242,640. His last raise was in May 2007.

UPDATE: The council postponed the vote for two weeks.

ETA Encinitas City Staff Quietly get Pay Raises in 2010
That is probably why there were audible, but restrained, cheers from staff when the council gave them 4 years of unconditional raises. It should be sobering to the taxpayer that staff actually cheered the council's unanimous decision.

UT SD Teachers to Looking at a Pay Cut
Teachers and other San Diego school employees could take pay cuts next year of up to 8 percent to help offset a projected $93 million deficit, under a proposal presented to labor groups this week.

UT Pay Raise OKed for SANDAG
The agency’s executive director, Gary Gallegos, makes $240,000 a year and will get $10,000 raises for the next five years under a deal approved 14-5 despite concerns among some board members about the timing.

Council Member Stocks voted for Gallegos' raise.

Pulled from Calpension Reform
Steven Greenhut’s appearance on C-SPAN’s BookTV is now available for viewing online — click here. He talked about his new book Plunder!: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation on December 10, 2009 at a book signing event at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Orange, California.

He takes a critical look at government workers and the unions that represent them. He argues that public employees receive salaries, pensions, benefits, and a level of job security that far outpace workers in the private sector, and that they have become a huge drain on local, state and federal coffers.

A former member of the Orange County Register’s editorial board, Steve is the director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Investigative Journalism Center and News Bureau in Sacramento. He is also the author of Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.

The streaming video runs approximately 50 minutes. During his talk Steve makes reference to CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz and the organization’s pension reform ballot initiatives, and CFFR vice president Jack Dean makes a brief cameo appearance near the end of the question and answer session.

ETA NOTE: So far the SEIU does not have a response on their website.