Marin elected officials and taxpayers have become acutely aware of the financial risks of hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded liabilities resulting from overly generous public employee pensions.
Most understand that it’s difficult if not impossible to change past pension promises due to the “California Rule.”
That’s shorthand for court rulings holding that once public retirement benefits are promised, they can never be changed.
Even as those new employees come aboard, finding a fix that’s simultaneously sustainable and fair to new employees is difficult.
A balanced approach emerged this week from an unusual source; one of Marin’s most prominent labor leaders.
It came about on the September edition of our new monthly web and cable television show, IJ Forums. This program, focusing on Marin’s public employee pension dilemma, will be available soon at MarinIJ.com.
Our guests are David Brown and Rollie Katz.
Brown is a core member of the Marin-based reform organization, Citizens for Sustainable Pensions. Katz is executive director of the Marin Association of Public Employees.
His union represents most of the county’s employees.
Katz surprisingly surfaced a previously unmentioned idea that has much merit. He was reciting a list of lower-paid retired county employees, including custodians and clerks, whose annual pension benefits are in the $40,000 range.
I reminded him that some well-paid Marin public employees, including a former county administrator, are earning six-figure inflation-adjusted yearly pensions.
Emphasizing he was speaking for himself and not MAPE, Katz offered, “If we could start from scratch, I’d favor a progressive pension system.” Essentially he’s suggesting that lower-paid employees need a greater portion of their salaries as pensions to maintain a non-luxurious standard of living in retirement.
Katz said janitors earning in the $50,000 range should get 90 percent of their salary as a pension. Go up the pay scale … particularly for those earning over $100,000 … and the percentage of salary paid as retirement benefits ought to substantially decrease.
That concept protects the little guy. At the same time, such an approach prevents the over-the-top enrichment of some higher-paid employees.
Why is it that we don’t hear similar meaningful suggestions from our elected officials? Katz deserves kudos for having the fortitude to suggest such an innovative concept.
A progressive pension system won’t solve the present unfunded pension mess since it can’t fill the funding hole our elected officials have already dug. It can mitigate the unsustainable status quo as new public employees trickle into the system.
It’s a practical and compassionate idea that the Marin Board of Supervisors should seriously consider.
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There’s push-back from North Bay Republicans supporting Donald Trump. They are aggrieved that some of The Donald’s opponents are rude and crude.
They contend Marin’s Democratic Party was insulting when it hosted a bean bag toss aimed at a cut-out of Trump at the Marin County Fair. Some were even more shocked when an artist mounted a nude full-frontal clay statue of the GOP leader at Market and Castro streets in the city.
It’s baffling how some manage to ignore that it is their national standard-bearer who’s the champion of abolishing political correctness.
His crude and demeaning references to his far-more-qualified Republican opponents in the primary along with his denigration of immigrants broke new ground in gutter-style politics.
Now the Trumpists are shocked and wounded that others are playing the same game. The reality is that after Trump opened the barn door, it’s no surprise that wild animals of all political persuasions rushed out.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes about local issues on Sundays and Wednesdays in the IJ. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.
