It’s kinda fun to watch those who consistently vote for democrats get destroyed by the policies they so much want...
Pay them in Pesos, Bullet Train vouchers and Carbon Tax Credits.
Put extremely simply: If the person who promised you those benefits didn’t pay for them, you’d best go look them up and ask them where they are.
Otherwise, the city council today could pass a budget which would outline every penny of spending for the next 200 years and tie the hands of every future city council. As that is obviously silly, no one could possibly tie a future budget, the SAME GOES FOR PROMISED BENEFITS.
Any city council, at their whim and as PART OF THEIR JOB can discontinue any and all benefits. And until city councils walk in with that attitude, any ‘negotiations’ will simply be how much of the union can embezzle from public funds.
I’ve always advocated for every city to stop offering any benefits at all; pay city employees a flat hourly wage where they can buy their own health insurance, surrender wages to have as many days of free time as they please, pay taxes, etc. Act like the sovereign entity you are.
Force a sale of most of the city owned properties—leave a few parks to set up tents for the city managers to have a place to do what they do.
Maybe Trump will bail them out. Bwahahahahahaha...
Lets move that Secession movement along...
Of course, all this will mean is that Moonbeam Brown, the chief DemocRAT of them all, will impose upon us taxpayers, a major bailout.
I suppose they will expect a bail out.
Basically lawmakers who approve sweetheart deals are no longer in office by the time its apparent they won’t deliver as promised.
Such sweetheart deals have no real money behind them - its just an IOU with a promise of future funding. Good luck with it when it doesn’t materialize.
We have lots of unfunded pension plans around the country and one way or another, taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for them.
What do they want for nothing, a rubber biscuit?
....and no more federal funding.
Good luck with that
Well, take a look at California’s first city to go bankrupt, Vallejo.
They didn’t include the cops and the fire fighters, which account for about 80% of the city’s direct budget, they didn’t deal with CALPERS, so they will go into bankruptcy again. And if you look at Stockton, CA (the other large municipal bankruptcy) the morons there also ignored the judge’s allowance to abrogate their union contracts, so they will go back in as well.
Folks, this is going to be happening all over the country. It isn’t just California, it’s everywhere. This nonsense about “public safety employees” getting to retire at 50 is going to hasten our demise. Our local fire district has had two chiefs retire in close succession ( one replaced the other then left a year later). They are retiring at more than they were paid! With fully paid healthcare these 50 year-olds and their wives can expect to live until they are at least 80. You do the math when they are getting $250,000 a year plus benefits. And the rank and file union FF’s do almost as well.
This is how debt and our unbacked, fiat currency fund the progressive nanny state.
Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money.
Much of the problem in California is related to the pension system using unrealistic investment return estimates, and a period where cities, in a fit of post-911 enthusiasm, raised public safety pensions from 2 1/2 percent of final salary per year worked to 3 percent. The latter error was exacerbated by some badly botched actuarial work. My town, for example, was told there’d be ‘almost no’ increase in cost, which is only true if you define “almost no” to mean “several million”.
Most California counties soak up the lions share of property taxes, leaving cities to survive on fees and sales tax. Any hit the economy takes, immediately impacts city budgets.
BURN BABY BURN!!!
govt workers....all of them....
So those potholes you are driving into and damaging your car and the streets that are like washboards are the result of that 15% more going to pay people far too much for the money they put in. It will get worse. 20% now and 30% etc soon enough.
The $25 ticket you get for using a cell phone is more then $250 with all the extra fees that are tacked on. The speeding ticket not paid on time leading to loss of car due to very large penalties all out of proportion.
BTW we have rain today so the the streets are going to start dissolving into potholes in the days ahead.
“The city’s general fund payments for pensions and retiree healthcare reached $1.04 billion last year, eating up more than 20% of operating revenue — compared with less than 5% in 2002.”
Retirements at $190,000 per year, some with continuing medical coverage.
A wise old monk I met somewhere in SE Asia once summed up this kind of situation and failed leadership by saying “Fuck them. They voted for these fools so let them suffer from them”.
He was a very wise old man.
You didn’t know that I spoke “monkenese” did you?