I am hearing that the City of Santa Ana budget has been cut to the bone, but this summer’s retroactive pension formula bump to 2.7-at-55 is greatly exacerbating their financial woes. This explains why they have implemented a hiring freeze.
So why did they spike their public employees’ pensions?
The short answer is that Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido was facing two challengers this year. So he gave the police and firemen everything they wanted so that they would continue to finance “Team Pulido.” Well, I hope they are all happy now that the city’s budget deficit is spiraling out of control.
I am also hearing that the City of Santa Ana will soon start firing employees. The pension spike is now resulting in understaffing that is only going to get worse. I hope the union hacks in my city are happy.
When will the City Council finally man up and fire inept City Manager Dave Ream? This pension spike happened on his watch. Someone needs to be held accountable…
Pension entitlements have been a sleeping monster for some time.
The state counties and cities all put them into place with legal votes and negotiations.
Just vote to take a five year hiatus from contributions, the funds have plenty of cash to meet their needs, right? And if that can’t be vote to happen, then cancel the plans outright, buy annuities for the current retires and move the balance in to the Social Security System.
Funding of these retirement systems has always been a percentage of the then current pay (wages) and the final payouts are based on inflated final year salaries. Recalculated all those pensions based the same way SS payments are based.
So the police get more. The SAPD already recieves 50% of the the cities budget. Compared to other cities the same size in Ca, Sacramento, San Diego, Oakland and Anaheim it is very inflated. Those cities range between 32% to 40%. If they want to help the budget they should start there. Of course the PD is one of the most influential organizations in the city. They even get CDBG money, they used that for their new building and asked for more this year.
Excellent story, Art.
Instapundit picked it up, too
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/
Larry, you should take a look at this Breitbart post on tea parties and where they should go now.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/21/code-tea-tea-parties-go-home-all-politics-is-local/