AB 1383 — Watching Another Train Wreck In Slow Motion

It was at the California Club in downtown Los Angeles, back in April of 2012, when I was serving my second term as Chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, that I met with several Southern California County Supervisors and three former California Governors.  In a stately room, former Governors Wilson, Davis and Deukmejian wanted to learn how Assembly Bill 109 (2011) was impacting counties.

AB 109, known as the Public Safety Realignment Act, was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown and it was an attempt to reduce the state prison population by diverting inmates down to county jails and to early release under the observation of probation officers. It was not going well.  

One colleague stated that personal property crime in San Bernardino County had skyrocketed by 30 percent.  Not the kind of thing you want to see when counties were cash strapped.

I mentioned, among many Sacramento driven initiatives, that one Governor signed SB 400 in 1999, which greatly increased the costs of public safety employees, thus requiring counties to make cutbacks and layoffs.  

Since that Governor was in the room, he approached me afterwards and said, “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have signed SB 400.” It was a 50 percent increase to defined benefit pension plans, retroactive to the date of hire, that exploded the employer contribution amounts.

During those difficult economic times, our Sheriff was able to rent empty cells to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for revenues needed to prevent even more cuts.  But AB 109 was now disrupting this strategy.

Fast forward to 2016.  The Los Angeles Times and CalMatters joined forces to take a look at the results of a massive pension formula increase.  I told them to call Governor Davis.

“Davis, who was elected in 1998 with more than $5 million in campaign contributions from public employee unions, says that if he had it to do over, he would not support the pension improvements.

“’If you’re asking me, with everything I’ve learned in the last 17 years, would I have signed SB 400…. no, I would not have signed it,’ Davis, now 73, said in a recent interview at his Century City law office.”

Fast forward another ten years. California’s cities, counties and Capitol have been choking on defined benefit pension plan annual required contribution payments.  The city of Costa Mesa sends one dollar out of every five it spends to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS).

These costs are crowding out funding for critical expenses.  One political consultant for police officer associations (unions) said to me, “Not all cops hate you – the new hires who were recently laid off wonder why their city councils approved such an expensive benefit upgrade.”

And here we are watching Sacramento rush through another pension plan prerequisite improvement for public safety personnel with Assembly Bill 1383 by Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor (D-Los Angeles).  Are memories that short? Don’t legislatures understand math?

I won’t go into the details. I only want to ask one question. Why? Why do taxpayers have to underwrite gold-plated pension benefits for government employees who retire at age 50? I shake my head when a financial planner tells me that he met with a public safety employee and realized that no retirement planning was necessary. The pension was that good.

The justification is rather simple. Please let me be blunt. One, public employee bargaining units are greedy. Two, once one employee group gets an improvement, the others will follow for the same. Three, these bargaining units fund the campaigns of state legislators. Four, these legislators are beholden to the bargaining unit leaders for their jobs. And the taxpayers get to hold the bag. Why do you think we’re seeing so many sales tax rate increase requests on city ballots?

AB 1383 is just out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it should have been killed.  It will probably pass on the Senate Floor, because the vast majority of the forty members need public employee union campaign funding support. It will then be approved by the State Assembly for the same reason.

Then Governor Newsom will probably sign the bill, as he needs bargaining unit funding for his Presidential campaign. Once put into law, city councils will agree to another pension enhancement because they are dependent on union campaign contributions too. And those cities will have to lay off one or more police officers to be able to pay for the increased pension plan contribution costs. And the newly hired police officers will be let go, as the last one in a public union job is the first one out. And the city councils will put sales tax rate increases on the ballot. And the cycle just goes on and on.

But long after legislators and city councilmembers have left their positions, if they’re honest, like former Governor Gray Davis, they’ll probably say something like, “If I knew then what I know now, I would have never voted for additional financial burdens due to higher police officer costs and reduced staffing in this critical department.”

The rest of us will see their fiscally irresponsible actions in our wallets and we’ll wonder how these insecure elected officials can sleep at night.