The Burlingame Voice

FWB: Calpers' New Approach

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to do a better job analyzing California issues than the local papers.  The October 28 edition had an Opinion piece complementing Calpers on its move to "reference pricing" for its beneficiaries looking for knee replacement surgery.  Without getting into too much detail (and no link since it is behind the paywall)

Calpers was upset after noticing that it paid between $20,000 and $120,000 for the same procedure across the state, without commensurate differences in outcomes.  In January 2010, the retirement organization established a $30,000 reference-price limit on what it would pay. .....by the next year  Half of the high-price hospitals cut their rates, many by a considerable amount.  (Guess which number they were trying to hit).

Maybe there is hope for this state after all.........

FWB: SMUHSD Antes Up

The Daily Journal has a piece on teacher negotiations that notes

Teachers in the San Mateo Union High School District are getting a raise for the second year in a row, which the district says will help offset rising health care costs.  At a meeting Thursday night, the district voted 4-1 to give teachers a 5 percent raise for this school year, costing $2,367,500.

Click through and read the whole piece to get a sense that the SMUHSD Trustees voting was not quite that strongly in favor.  And if I'm reading this Board page correctly, there was one absent or abstaining.

Although Trustee Stephen Rogers voted in favor of the agreement, he takes issue with how the negotiation process is run. He said he couldn’t go into detail, as some of the process took place in closed session.

“Our teachers do a great job,” Rogers said. “My disagreement was with how the process worked. There are a host of things we’ve got to get better on [for negotiations]. I wish the process was different, with some chances on both sides.

I know at least one trustee reads the Voice regularly, so perhaps we can get just a bit more info.

 

 

FWB: Paycheck > Work

I've been hoping the Sunday Mercury News-Times-whatever front page article from Sunday would appear on its website, but the website is such a disaster I still cannot find it.  So here are a couple of tidbits from Thomas Peele's piece; retyped by yours truly

San Mateo Harbor Commissioner Pietro Parravano got $25,757 in cash and benefits last year for attending 21 meetings that lasted an average of 77 minutes each, the (Mercury News') analysis shows.  That's $1,094 an hour.  Parravano, 64, a commercial fisherman from Half Moon Bay who also serves on several national fisheries commissions, said he's never questioned receiving full benefits for the part-time office he's held for nearly two decades.  The harbor commission oversees two marinas and a park and employed 27 workers in 2012.

The article really laid into the another aspect

Being a San Mateo County harbor commissioner can pay even beyond the grave.  When Commissioner Sally Campbell died in April 2012 during her 20th year in office, her cash pay stopped but the district continued to fund her medical insurance at a cost of more than $18,000.  That's because Campbell included her a grandson, whom she'd adopted as to make a legal dependent, on her policy.

Finishing on a high note, the article concludes by saying

In San Mateo County, Parravano said there is talk about rolling the harbor commission's functions into county government and doing away with the elected commission.

Shouldn't that be about a 3 second conversation??

Post on Peceimer

The riches just keep on coming in today's Daily Post round-up of the City Council race.  The Post's interview of Andrew Peceimer reveals this gem

Peceimer, 48, is a commercial real estate broker and said what makes him stand out as a candidate is that he will have his own privately hired person to put another set of eyes to go through the city's budget.  He said as a person who has managed hundreds of millions, he "reads the fine print" and has taken the time to study the numbers.

Left unsaid was why he needs to privately fund some unknown person if he is the person who "reads the fine print"?  One also wonders why this initiative was not mentioned during the candidates' debate?  I have to admit, I tire of him saying the unfunded pension liabilities have to be "tackled" and yet he has already read the fine print but isn't saying how.

Friends with Benefits - Part 22 BART 70% Labor

We last looked at our FWB theme in January.  Mike Rosenberg's article in today SM County Times regarding BART's costs had a couple of interesting tidbits like

The average worker in BART's largest union, the local Service Employees International Union, earned $77,366 in gross pay and $32,235 worth of benefits in 2012. Their average benefits cost is up about 12 percent since 2010, the first year this newspaper began collecting benefits data, while gross pay has remained roughly flat since their last contract was signed in 2009.

Out of the $568 million operating budget for the fiscal year that began this month, BART plans to spend about 70 percent on labor and 30 percent on electrical power, equipment and other programs needed to run service.

That benefit to gross pay ratio is 41.7% or roughly two and a half times (250%) of the US private industry standard.  The top part of the article shows why.  It's definitely unsustainable!

 

Friends with Benefits - Part 21 This would be funny....

This would be funny if it weren't so sad.  The San Mateo Mercury Times somehow found an administrative assistant in the SJ school district's special ed department to write an OpEd claiming "Californians have had enough of pension reform".  The piece is so lightweight I thought my paper was going to float up to the ceiling as I read it.  First, the author--one Donna D'Arcy claims

Legislators may have lost their appetite for using pensions as a scapegoat for budget woes.

That's funny on its face since it isn't apparent legislators outside of the locals in San Jose and San Diego have done ANYTHING about pension reform except to watch the tidal wave of cash that crushed Prop 32.  You can read up on the problem here, here and here.  D'Arcy goes on to claim

Critics also were quieted by the California Public Employees Retirement System's announcement that its investments earned 13.3 percent in 2012. Over the long-term, that number is even bigger, showing that California's pension system is strong.

That last bit about "that number is even bigger" begs a footnote.  Really?  Where is she getting that and what selective bit of data is she hiding behind?  The suffocating future pension liabilities are well-documented.

But the most egregious part is the idea that Californians have had enough of reform.  D'Arcy should go look at the polls and the few elections that aren't swayed by forced union dues money.  She can also take a look at the Seventh Circuit Court ruling last Friday that reaffirmed the reforms in Wisconsin.  The article would be funny--if it weren't so sad.

Friends with Benefits - Part 20 New Year's Wish

Our local scribe John Horgan has his "six-pack" of wishes for 2013 that does a nice job of mirroring my own.  Mr. Horgan has been watching the local pension issue as well and has the following to say here

The latest extensive audit performed by the county's controller is somewhat encouraging on the subject of long-term public employee pension requirements. Still, the figures are rather stark. According to the report, county government (the county's second-biggest employer, by the way) has a long-term, unfunded public pension liability of 28 percent as of the close of the past fiscal year. Add in the public retirees' unfunded health insurance liability and the total dollar figure comes to about $1 billion. County supervisors have been trying to trim those costs but more work needs to be done.

Aside from the disappointing idea that the county is the second largest employer in the county, with a population around 727,000 the $1 billion figure runs about $1,375 per person.  And that assumes they got the estimated rate of return even close to a real world figure.  Sounds like a good place to put some of that "extra" Measure A cash.

Brave Politician - Part 2

Little did I know when I posted about Gloria Romero a month ago, that she would make a local appearance to spread her brave message!  Ms. Romero stopped by the Lane Room at the B'game library on Friday to address a group of local woman--and they let a guy in, too!  Her story is even more compelling live--here are a few choice parts:

She got her PhD in psychology, but chose not to study clinical psych because she didn't want to be around crazy people--then she joined the California state legislature.

As a Democratic state senator from East L.A. one of her first assignments was to work on prison reform, then she went on to work on school reform--flip sides of the same coin!  And they are the two most heavily unionized aspects of state government.

She realized that coming to B'game was the heart of enemy territory since the CTA is headquartered here.  As a former teacher she is still a member and it was interesting to hear the sexist slurs that have been used against her by her own union leadership.  I won't repeat them here--use your imagination.

To get tenure in K-12 takes two years--really 18 months in practice--while at the college-level it takes seven years.

She was adamant about passing Prop. 32 as the only way to make progress for both the kids and the teachers themselves.  Her comments about how little the union hierarchy communicates with the membership were very telling.  Forced collection of union political dues is a money train that has steamrolled independent-minded teachers and politicians alike.

One last point she made was about the League of Women Voters advertisement running on TV.  We used to think of the LWV as a non-partisan group interested in examining both sides of an issue.  That is why B'game uses them to moderate City Council candidate debates--or has in the past.  Ms. Romero indicated the League refused to even talk to the pro-32 advocates prior to designing their ad.  That is a very sad demise for a once-valuable organization!

 

32 Is For You...and Me...and Everyone Else, Too

We are a little over a month away from a typical California election with lots of ballot propositions and some that are hard to decipher (like #31).  But one Proposition is clear and critical to righting the ship that is California.  Recall my comments about Gloria Romero's brave statements here--well this is how her point of view can become reality.

Proposition 32 goes to the heart of the money trail that leads to Sacramento by changing the union payroll deduction process to be voluntary.  What could be more fair than that?  Voluntary.

The Yes on 32 website states

The measure prohibits unions, corporations, government contractors, and state and local government employers from spending money deducted from an employee’s paycheck for “political purposes.” Under the measure, this term would include political contributions, independent expenditures, member communications related to campaigns, and other 33 expenditures to influence voters. This measure would not affect unions’ existing authority to use payroll deductions to pay for other activities, including collective bargaining and political spending in federal campaigns.

The other way to put it is union members would have the right to opt out of having their paychecks docked for lobbying that they may not agree with or want to fund even if they do agree.

Remember what Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward in All The President's Men:  "Follow the money".  We are a half trillion in the hole on pension funding with no changes in sight, we are being asked to raise income tax rates while companies leave the state in droves, and student test scores are not improving but the tracking mechanism is being watered down. 

It's time to change how things work in Sac.  Vote yes on 32...for you, me and everyone.

Friends with Benefits - Part 20 One Brave Politician

I read an interview with Gloria Romero in the Wall Street Journal a week ago, but its message (i.e. her message) has stuck with my since, so it's worth posting a little bit of it in our FWB series.  I get tired of complaining about Sacramento pols, so here is a kudo to Ms. Romero.  Wish she had won in the last election

Former Los Angeles Lakers Coach Phil Jackson once referred to Sacramento as a "cowtown," but Gloria Romero, a pro-labor Democrat who served as California's Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2008, takes exception to the belittling description. The capitol building in Sacramento, she says, has "the eighth most powerful economy in the world under that dome," and it operates not unlike other wealthy kleptocracies. "There's no other way to say it politely. It's owned."

Topping the list of proprietors is the California Teachers Association, which she calls the most muscular union and political player in the state. Then there are the unions for nurses, prison guards, firefighters and police. Call them California's "deep state."

I won't cut and past the whole interview, but her bottom line is

California Teachers Association officials "walk around like they're God." She recalls knocking on Democratic doors trying to line up votes. "They always wanted to know where's CTA," because that's "their sugar daddy."

"I remember sitting in Democratic caucus" and hearing lawmakers call the unions "our allies, our friends and allies," she says. "And I thought, the NAACP is never included." Grass-roots school-reform groups were also "never included. Our 'allies' are SEIU, CTA, the California school employees."

She's made a living in the backrooms of Sacto, so one has to take her opinions seriously.