Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Press- Democrat Opines Public Pensions

The Santa Rosa Press- Democrat has as surprisingly lucid editorial today looking at the exploding pension costs of California state and municipal employees. There's even a Facebook comment by past state assembly(?) candidate, Tom Lynch, supporting the statewide initiative by the Mayor of San Jose to reform the state's public pension systems.

I'm still wondering how Humboldt County's pension systems are holding up and whether Eureka's last sales tax increase was covering in whole, or part, rising employee pension costs? It's happening across the state. It must be happening here.


4 Comments:

At 11:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is what happens in any public union, it is easy to get out of control when you use other peoples money that you dont work for to spend. Why public sector unions should be abolished. Only private sector unions should be aloud. Private sector union are the only way becuase they only exist if a company is profitable with it own blood sweat and tears.They cant just raise taxes to keep paying for a failed business.Which makes it unions strive to make a good product to keep its job. Unlike public sector they just get tenured and only have to show up for work. dont matter if there job preformance ranks close to the bottom they cant be fired and our kids get stupider. like me and my spelling

 
At 12:42 PM, Anonymous democraticJon said...

I spoke with Democrat John Lowry and really liked the guy. I probably won't be voting for him, but if you are concerned about pensions - check him out. He is running as a "independent" democrat or "business" democrat if I may paraphrase his words. I'm not certain I'm getting them right. He's running for Assembly against local Hezekiah Allen and heavily endorsed and probable favorite Jim Wood. I'm leaning toward Hezekiah right now after his significant passion against the GPU GP as re-written by Supervisor's Fennell and Bohn. Guess I can't stay away, sorry. Trying to be helpful though, that should count.

 
At 1:11 PM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Steve Greenhut has a piece in the San Diego Union- Tribune discussing Mayors in support of pension reform. He points out the four big ones right now are Democrats. I'm not going to link to the piece right now as SDU-T is now a pay site now with only a certain number of free views.

I'm rationing my views there. If I even click on the link I believe that is considered a view by their count, so, I copied the lead- on text from Calnews.com where I found the story:

"Some writers have been trying to portray the ongoing California effort to reform the state’s pension system as a right-wing Republican effort, but Democrats dominate the list of supporters of a statewide pension initiative announced today. It is targeted for the November 2014 ballot. The four Democrats are Chuck Reed of San Jose, Pat Morris of San Bernardino, Miguel Pulido of Santa Ana and Bill Kampe of Pacific Grove.

We'll have to wait and see if other Democrats jump on board. I'm not holding my breath as the public employee unions pretty much rule this state.

 
At 4:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The first plan is to gut public pensions after that they will go after the trade union pensions. All industry is looking for is a cheap labor source.

What will go after that? Oh yeah the Social Security "entitlement".

 

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