The Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers just released an update to its groundbreaking 2011 study, “The Pension Crisis is Coming to Marin.” It outlines, in painful detail, Marin’s 11 municipalities’ shortfall in funding public employee pensions and other post-retiree health care benefits.
It’s noteworthy that the effort comes from the association of Marin’s mostly volunteer 55 mayors and council members and not from the county’s full-time Board of Supervisors. The report’s principal authors, Larkspur Councilman Larry Chu and Mill Valley Councilman John McCauley, both have private-sector financial analysis experience. The 46-page report plus appendices was prepared at no taxpayer cost.
Marin County’s five supervisors might consider spending their own time preparing a similar report to analyze unfunded liabilities for county government and Marin’s multiple special-purpose districts. The council just proved a high-powered expensive outside consultant isn’t needed to do the job.
Thanks to Marin’s pension reformers, Citizens for Sustainable Pensions, it’s no secret that most Marin jurisdictions are in a tough spot. The Chu-McCauley report concludes Marin’s 10 cities belonging to California Public Employees’ Retirement System collectively owe CalPERS $176.9 million. San Rafael, which instead of CalPERS, belongs to Marin County Employee’s Retirement Association, has a separate $120.6 million MCERA liability.
Add to that $49.3 million owed by 10 of Marin’s cities for pensions and benefits and another $33.78 million owned by San Rafael for post-retirement medical insurance benefits.
Thanks to a dithering public employee union-controlled California Legislature, cities, counties, schools and special purpose districts have only three strategies to address their unsustainable pension and post-retirement healthcare debts. The choices: raise taxes, reduce the number of employees and/or reduce services.
How‘s that for an unpalatable conundrum?
The report’s weakness is in its long-term recommendations. They are good suggestions, but they don’t go far enough, soon enough.
The report recommends “Developing a long-range fiscal plan to measure cities’ exposure to increased pension and OPEB costs.” What’s shocking is that not every jurisdiction has taken this basic step. The second recommendations are: “Be more transparent about benefit costs.” Who could disagree? Unfortunately some agencies muddle the details, causing the public to have little idea of what’s going on in the name of buying “labor peace.” Third and most specific is to “make OPEB obligations more sustainable.”
OPEB benefits are controllable. Many were adopted decades ago before Medicare was a reality. Why not have all public employees join Medicare?
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I’ve written that Congressman Jared Huffman, a Democrat from San Rafael, was a step too far ahead when he called for impeaching President Donald Trump. This past week’s revelations have driven many of us in the political center to conclude the red line has finally been crossed.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines bribery “as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty.” Trump did that in a conversation with Ukraine’s president by threatening to withhold military aid to garner alleged dirt on a domestic political opponent, Joe Biden.
Trump’s background is the nitty-gritty streets of outer-borough New York City. Mentored by Joe McCarthy’s sidekick and disbarred attorney Roy Cohn, taught the finer points of life by slumlord father Fred Trump and familiar with the ways of the mob, Trump knows the gangland’s code. Never say in plain English what is better said by implication. When the mob goes to a flower shop owner and says, “It’s a nice store you have here. It’d be a shame if something bad happens,” that means “pay up or else.” Trump knows that and so does Ukraine’s president. Whether the now disclosed request is bribery or extortion, it’s a felony and a “high crime.”
