– Jack Dean

By Jack Dean

I almost burst out laughing the first time a saw an ad for Harry Sidhu on cable TV. The final frame of the ad featured the appropriate legal disclosure information, which said: “Harry Sidhu … Paid for by the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs Independent Expenditure Committee.”

How delicious! I couldn’t think of a more accurate way of describing what’s happening. The AOCDS and OCEA (Orange County Employees Association) together will reportedly be spending well over $1 million to buy Harry — er, to buy Harry a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors. If elected, he’ll definitely be bought and paid for by the unions. A mailing piece sent out recently by the Orange County GOP did a wonderful job of depicting Harry as a puppet of the unions.

There’s no mention on Harry’s website of any union endorsements, so why would they do this? It’s simple: Harry has indicated that, if elected, he would vote to drop the County’s lawsuit to roll back the retroactive pension hike that the deputy sheriffs’ won in 2001.

Harry coyly says he doesn’t know why the unions are doing all this for him.

Right.

FlashReport publisher Jon Fleischman sums up the situation nicely in an article on the GOP’s Red County blog: “The union bosses have analyzed the race and determined that Sidhu’s Republican challenger, Fullerton Councilman Shawn Nelson, is not supportive of the union on their key issues — he supports moving to 401(k)-style retirement benefits as a matter of policy, not a matter of negotiation — and Nelson would continue legal action to try and nullify a massive retroactive gift of funds that occured when thousands of county workers were given new, more generous benefits for years already worked. Sidhu sides with the union bosses on these issues.”

When the County filed the lawsuit to repeal the deputy sheriffs’ retroactive pension benefits, the potential savings at that time were estimated to be $187 million. But according to Supervisor John Moorlach (the driving force behind the lawsuit) that number has since increased to around $400 million. So it’s easy to see why the unions are spending so heavily on Harry. Wouldn’t you spend $1 million to protect $400 million?

But wait! There’s more! The stakes are even bigger than this.

If Orange County’s lawsuit is successful and retroactive pension benefits are ruled to be unconstitutional, the impact on pension agreements in cities and counties throughout California will be huge. According to Attorney General candidate John Eastman, who has made retroactive pensions the centerpiece of his campaign, the dollar amount involved could be as high as $13 billion in savings to taxpayers.

The unions obviously want to defeat Shawn Nelson, and the malleable Harry Sidhu is their man. Hopefully, taxpayers won’t be fooled by the unions’ million-dollar smear campaign and will vote tomorrow for the pension reform candidate, Shawn Nelson.

Jack Dean is president of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers and publisher of PensionTsunami.com.

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I suspect that few union officials will be laughing.

Be sure to visit the CalPERS $100,000 Pension Club searchable database to see why this issue is such a big problem.

[UPDATE AS OF SATURDAY 6/12 AT 11:00 AM: The producer of the video removed it from YouTube, apparently due to a possible copyright infringement.]

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In my long battle against public defined benefit pension plan abuses, I have been frustrated that the system allows for egregious double-dipping opportunities. In fact, the Sacramento Bee also pointed out that some retirees were even triple-dipping-by also filing for unemployment benefits!

But, in my efforts to address this issue, I’ve been more focused on a system that encourages good people to retire at such a young age. We see people retiring in the public sector at 55 years of age. Why not? Stay at work, earn 100% of salary. Stay at home, earn 80% of salary. So they put in 40-plus hours for that additional 20%? No wonder they say, “Why work for free?”

Many retire and realize that they still want to work. Why develop all the experience and knowledge, only to let it sit on a shelf?

After all, some of us Type-A people don’t do well sitting around the house. I also know that many love their careers. We literally force Police Chiefs out because they can’t explain to their spouses that for the long hours they put in, they are only earning an additional 10 to 20 percent in wages. Of course they retire. And, of course they work for another city. After all, that city just lost their Police Chief for the same reason. Are the Chiefs bad people? Of course not.

The answer? Raise retirement ages. This is low hanging fruit. This is what the County of Orange just did with its largest employee bargaining unit. New hires will not automatically go into a “2.7% @ 55″ formula. They will adopt a “1.62% @ 65.” They will be able to adopt the higher benefit, but they will be paying the higher withholdings in order to do so. Senate Bill 752 also lets those employees currently in the higher tier drop down to the lower one. This will be tempting as it provides the elimination of the related withholdings, thus providing an increase in their net paycheck. For many, this may be a raise opportunity they cannot turn down.

The big news? This was a strategy that was negotiated and approved by our largest bargaining unit. And the enabling legislation (co-drafted by our office) passed almost unanimously through a labor-dominated state legislature. This is an amazing story. This is a good first step. And we’re at the forefront of addressing legacy costs. These pension and other post employee benefit costs are boat anchors dragging every municipality in the state down the path of insolvency.

It’s not quite as momentous an anniversary to celebrate as the Apollo 11 moon landing, perhaps, but today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of this project.

First came the PensionWatch e-mail list, which I began by occasionally forwarding news items and editorials to a handful of friends in Fullerton regarding the unsustainable cost of public employee pensions and benefits. I also started building a separate e-mail list of reporters, editors, columnists and bloggers who were covering the issue.

About a year later we launched the website, shamelessly swiping its name from an excellent editorial in the Orange County Register titled, “The pension tsunami is just offshore” which had been published — very appropriately — on July 20, 2004.

At times it has felt like the task of turning back the tide of public pension debt has indeed been comparable to putting a man on the moon, but after five years of hard work we’re beginning to see some small successes, and we’re definitely more optimistic than we were when we started.

And it’s all because of a growing army of aware, concerned citizens like you who visit the site regularly and forward links to your family, friends and elected officials. Thank you.

Jack Dean is editor and publisher of PensionTsunami.com, president of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers, and a member of the board of directors of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

It doesn’t get any better!