I am reminded of the fellow to whom the ATM keeps spitting out cash w/o him earning it.
Then he gets all postal when the judge tells him to give it back.
This is all going to end very badly for Big Govt and the taxpaying saps that finance their excesses.

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I won’t spend a lot of time educating you, it is all on the county website, dig in. But watch out, you may trip on the facts.

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“The last decade has seen a rate of return on the fund’s assets of 1.6%. They STILL expect over 7.75%. Look at CalPERS. They STILL expect a 7.75% return annually when they realize a 1% return.”

Jim, if you, unfamiliar with the concept of averages as you are, are an auditor, then I am an astronaut.

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“Look at the state – $500+ BILLION unfunded, while the state continues to run a budget deficit.”

Baloney.

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So get a clue will you. SEIU IS NOT THE PROBLEM, MANAGEMENT IS and they aren’t union. We need MORE rank and file and fewer high paid, high perk managers.

One department who is doing a excellent job is Family Support. They reorganized and have few managers to rank and file employees (the highest ratio in the county). Because of this, they have creative, experienced workers pulling in all kinds of money. Compare Family Support to DHS that has a very low management to rank and file ratio with lots of contracting out and you can see the difference in cost to the tax payers. All the departments need to be reorganized to match Family Support to improve and maintain services to the community and CUT COSTS.

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In addition, SEIU and the other public unions financed their campaigns and got out the votes to elect them. So these puppets are moved by the hands of SEIU.

That is why all of this smoke and mirror talk about county pension reform is just talk. The Board said as much when they voted 5-0 to do something and then turned around and said, all of this is subject to negotiations. So we know where that is going.

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Good luck with the union banning thing. Start with the 1st Ammendment and go from there.

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For starters, Lisa is correct that department heads’ salaries were raised faster than rank and file, way faster. The reason for this is the “recruit the best and brightest” excuse, pulling more from outside the county than inside the county. The population of DH’s became transient (more on that later).

Tom is right in that the entire groups’ pensions went up, due in part at least, and a big part at that, to medical benefits of $7,000 per year that are “pensionable.” (Tom, Lisa will remind us, correctly, that the contract calling for those benefits was opposed by 1021, and imposed by the BOS).

Now get this…the reason transient leaders push so hard for salary over stabililty, and are eager to trade other benefits, like medical, for pay is that their Sonoma County pay becomes the basis for their prior jobs’ penssion pay outs.

They will never make a “Sonoma list” because they will collect many pensions. But, those pensions will be based on their highest pay, and that’s what they are after.

BTW…most DHs had almost nothing to do with setting their salaries; HR and CAO make recommendations to the BOS.

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When people walk into the permit office to get their permits, they need rank and file to facilitate services quickly. When a disaster hits, we need more Public Health nurses ready and able to go out in the community to make sure people stay healthy, more road crews to repair the streets, more safety employees to protect the people and so on.

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To say that their work was demanding and their pay low and their benefits were meager would be an understatement.

But, you make a mistake in implying rank and file are all in the same boat.

Rank and file in Public Safety make, on average, and I’m guessing here, about 3 times what the average SEIU member earns in government and their benefits are at least 3 times more generous.

All rank and file are not equal.

Public Safety is eating SEIU’s lunch and causing their members to be held down and or laid off.

The managers, supervisors and directors are complicit in all of this, and, as you imply, benefit far beyond anything that could be called rational and sustainable.

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The public employee pension system is bankrupt at every level. Look at the state – $500+ BILLION unfunded, while the state continues to run a budget deficit. The county (already provided the figures in a previous post) is broke. Cities are broke, with some declaring bankruptcy (many more are going to). The numbers are the numbers. The dopey taxpayers who keep electing the same people will end up footing the bill.

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Of course, shouting down your opponent is SOP for union thugs and collectivists.
But I repeat myself.

Here is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JXPIBsxdk0
· Here is the Left in 1999 in the “Battle of Seattle” trashing the city during the meeting of the World Trade Organization. Notice the guy in the mustache at 38 seconds in? That’s the current president (and then treasurer) of the United Steelworkers union, Leo Gerard. Gerard is now an Obama appointee to an advisory post in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Really. Mr. Gerard was spotted in Seattle (he is said to have brought 1,400 other union members with him) helping to move concrete barricades to obstruct the Seattle police in their futile attempt to keep the peace. Some $20 million in damage was done to the city by rioting Leftists.

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How a pension system can be considered sustainable when contributions per employee are based on average pay during a career but the payout is based on highest years’ pay is beyond me…even with 7.5% “expected” annual returns.

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