The unfortunate truth is that the public employee unions now control the government at the state level and the county and city. The unions, of course, say they did not cause the deficits. That is true to a degree, because equally or even more so the culprits are the ones who authorized the huge pension increases in 1999. I still don’t understand why those increases cannot be rescinded.
Now our elected officials will always try to kick the can to the future, hence 17 years amortization or 30 years. Won’t be their problem. The first step should be to set up a new program for new hires, preferably a 401-type rather than pensions. They prefer to have closed meetings so that we cannot see how beholden they are to the unions.
I’ve been warning about these pension plans for the last 10 years, to no avail. The county and the cities need to make whatever cuts are needed to start balancing the budgets. That will mean cutting jobs, cutting salaries, and cutting services. There is no easy way out of this mess.
Time for our elected officials to do their jobs!
This article appears in Apr 22-29, 2010.
