Weekly News – March 1, 2014

Police union chiefs butt heads in Florida
There’s an unusual situation in Miami-Dade County as the heads of the two biggest police unions in the area (Dade County PBA President John Rivera and Miami FOP President Javier Ortiz) are publicly disagreeing about a controversial case. A Pinecrest police officer has been accused of breaking the law by not giving first aid to two university students who were hit by a car. Her defense is that she was not equipped with the required safety equipment that her agency requires before giving first aid. The officer’s supervisor initially issued a suspension, but now that the police chief has called for her termination, things have gotten more serious.

Solving the pension crisis requires bitter medicine
This article is a fairly level-headed look at the problems of unfunded pension liability in Jacksonville, Fl. The citizen task force has concluded that to make the math work, the city needs to make an annual payment of $200 million every year for fourteen years. (To give you an idea of the scale, this is about $240 per year for every man, woman and child living in Jacksonville.) Suggestions for balancing the pension budget include some combination of property tax hikes, sales tax hikes, and reductions in benefits.

Should Pennsylvania charge for dues collection?
Usually the choices presented in the union dues auto-deduction battles are all-or-nothing: either unions get to automatically deduct the dues from members’ paychecks, or they don’t. This editorial suggests a third option: charging a small fee to auto-deduct dues. On the down side, this would cost us a few bucks every year. On the plus side, this option would force the anti-union folks to come up with a new argument to hide the fact that they’re really just trying to tear down the public sector unions any way they can.

Editorial: Health care costs will “overwhelm this city”
In San Antonio, public safety health benefit costs have increased by about 140% in the last decade, which is a rate of increase that we can all agree is out of control. In the same time period, costs for civilian city worker health costs only increased about 30%. This has led some to wonder why everyone can’t be on the cheaper plan. There is a city task force studying the issue, and it seems likely that they will recommend some reduction of health benefits to public safety workers in order to curb spending.

Retired Sheriff with $276,000 annual pension is asking for more
In California, even as battles rage across the country (and especially in California!) about unfunded pension liabilities, the ability to reduce the benefits of retirees, and the widespread reductions in benefits for future and current employees, one retired sheriff is saying that he deserves significantly more than the rather generous $276,000 he’s currently getting every year. This is exactly the sort of story that turns voters against public sector unions – the next time someone calls you “greedy” for trying to negotiate a benefits package, you can blame this guy.

Public Pension Tabs Multiply as States Defer Costs and Hard Choices
This in-depth article about the national epidemic of unfunded public pension liability boils down to a pretty simple concept. Debt doesn’t go away by itself – you have to pay it down. The longer you defer your payments, the worse it’s going to get. Politicians get away with not following these basic tenets because they’re not the ones on the hook when the bill comes due. The utter lack of consequences for politicians making poor financial decisions has led to a tsunami of unfunded pensions and an uncertain future for many public sector employees.