On several fronts people are sounding alarm bells about the growing cost of the pensions that have been promised to government employees, especially in California. Given the failure of our elected officials to fund these promises on an actuarial basis and the recent investment losses of what funds have been set aside, alarm bells are sounding. Unfunded liabilities, unsustainable government commitments and potential bankruptcy are labels affixed to the current situation.
Steven Greenhut has authored a new book about the costs of government employees and their promised pensions. Titled Plunder, the cover lays the blame for this fiscal situation at the feet of public employee unions. Not to be outdone by Greenhut, or perhaps in concert with him, the Orange County Register periodically reports and editorializes on this situation, and John Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association frequently writes on the topic. The Sunday, December 20 Register has a front page lead (“Toxic Pensions Threaten Budgets”, a 2 page story titled “Pension System Run Amuck” (Pages 19 and 22 of the first section) and a Coupal column (Commentary Section, page 4) reviewing and praising the Greenhut book.
I read these articles, and something struck me. Amidst the explanations of why elected officials have in recent years granted very generous pension benefits to government employees in law enforcement, and to some extent other government employees, the two page Register story repeatedly quotes the elected officials as saying things like they had incomplete information, they were misled, and they relied upon bad assumptions.
The pattern I see emerging is one in which elected officials did not do their homework, or did not care about the long range picture when making decisions for the day. Blame can be assigned to unions and the employees who negotiate for enhanced retirement benefits at the bargaining table. They may have handed the elected officials a loaded gun. But it is the electeds who pulled the trigger, in municipality after municipality, though in some cases (County of Los Angeles) an analytical approach carried the day and there the enhanced law enforcement retirement package was not approved. So, it can be done analytically. Most local electeds apparently have been lazy.
It is time for elected local officials to wake up and require independent financial analysis of proposed labor agreements, and not rely upon what is handed to them by their staff – staff that often stands to benefit themselves from the proposed agreements. The people advocating initiatives and other measures to limit the perceived power of labor unions and other public employee groups might instead focus on enacting requirements for such independent analysis so the sunshine will produce full disclosure of both short term and long term implications and the litany of lame excuses voiced by electeds will no longer be on the menu. Let’s focus on making the electeds do their job for a change.
You and the Register editorial writers apparently have something in common because on Dec. 22 there was a Register editorial that seemed to acknowledge that bad decision making by local electeds is part of the public pension problem. I believe the editorial also said these people “did not do their homework”. I just wonder if there is any kind of way to get/require them to do their homework in the future – why that is actually work, and many do not seem to want to work hard at their elected positions. Good point though.