Inmates Are Running the Asylum
by Dale Tyler

On May 16, 2011, the City Council voted to increase the pay of city employees approximately 2.9%. This increase comes at a time when the city is running a significant deficit by spending more money than there are tax monies coming in. Also, many private sector employees have not had raises in some time due to the economic conditions here in California. One of the chief causes of the problems in California is excessive spending on government.

Why should the council give the city staff a 2.9% raise? Because the very same staff “determined” that they were underpaid by about 2.9% compared to other cities in the area. None of the publicly available exhibits to support agenda item 21 provide any details as to how our city staff made this determination, but we have seen this kind of reasoning before. Here is how they may have gone about it.

• Find other cities that seem to be similar to Mission Viejo, but are actually in the top 50% of payroll costs.
• Compare the high range of each employee classification. This will require some creative adjustment of classes since there is not always equivalence between cities. Always adjust upwards to compare to another city's higher classifications.
• Using these high-cost cities' data and the scaled up classifications, determine how “underpaid” our poor city employees really are.
• Result: Mission Viejo employees need about a 2.9% raise to make as much as the “average” city worker.

Even if these methods did not stack the deck in favor of a raise, the real question is why any raise was needed at all. If we are to use comparisons to establish the correct pay increase, the comparison should be made using total compensation, including pensions, healthcare and all other benefits to similar positions in the private sector. There is no reason why government employees should be paid more than you and I.

It seems to me that it is never prudent to allow the city employees to write the reports that are then used by the City Manager to browbeat the simpletons on the City Council into giving raises to those same employees.

It should be noted that the City Council did take some steps toward having the city staff finally start paying more of their share of their already extravagant pensions. The Council needs to go much further and require that all employees pay their entire pension costs, starting today. Unfortunately, our City Council decided that for future employees that the city will still pay 39% of the pension costs. Our city council understands that the bill for their reckless spending will be paid by future city residents, and the time bomb of government employee pensions will be someone else's problem, because they will be out of office before the bill comes due.

This pension “reform” is nothing but a shell game that will cost the City dearly in years to come. I wish we had a council majority with the courage to stand up to the government employees.

These fake reforms, long championed by Ury with Kelley and Leckness as tag-alongs, should clearly demonstrate to voters that new leadership is needed on the Mission Viejo City Council.