Public Employees Oppose the Arena - Ed Ring
On 8-31 the Sacramento Bee ran a story entitled "Police Union Opposes
Arena Measure."
It is time for the media to stop treating public employee unions with
kid gloves. Instead the media needs to help educate voters on this
issue. It is a conflict of interests for public employees to exercise
such undue influence on public policy. With respect to the areana
debate, they are, once again, holding our public policy hostage to
their wages and benefits.
The reason we can't afford public works in general, and more police in
particular, is because of the costs of funding their pensions.
You don't have to be an actuary or a math genius to understand the
taxpayer's dollars involved. Public employees in general, and police
in particular, retire in their early 50's with pensions for life that
are usually around 80% of what they made in their final year of work
(i.e., their highest salary).
This means that they are retired for nearly as many years as they
worked, on average. And because their pension is 80% of their highest
salary, they actually cost taxpayers more, in sum, during their
retirement than they cost during the time they worked. Because of
this, take any salary a public employee makes, and double it.
triThis is a gross injustice to the private taxpayers, who fund these
generous public employee pensions when private workers only get social
security, available at age 65, at a rate perhaps 20% of their yearly
earnings while working.
Not only is this a gross injustice, it is the primary reason we have
government deficits, and it is the reason we can't afford more
services, such as more policemen to patrol the new arena. Just
reducing public employee pensions to half what they are now - which
would still be double what social security offers - would save
California's taxpayers tens of billions of dollars per year.
Voters should understand that Sacramento may not get a new arena
because a gang of self-interested government employees are using our
money to lobby against the arena unless we acquiese to the
perpetuation of their grossly inflated benefits. It's fine to give
people who take risks to provide for our safety a pension, even a much
better one than the rest of us get. But they should not get a pension
so extreme that it requires yearly pension fund inputs literally ten
times higher than what the rest of us pay each year into social
security. Especially when these costs are breaking our government
budgets and preventing the construction of vitally needed public works.
And there is no justification for public employees to have a
stranglehold on our elected officials, or to exercise so much
influence on our voters - using our money.
Public employee unions should not be running our agencies, controlling
our elections, and breaking our budgets. As it is, that is exactly
what they are doing, and this must be challenged.
Ed Ring
Editor
ecoworld
www.ecoworld.com
