I’ve suddenly got second thoughts about this initiative drive to cut the salaries of the Mayor, City Council, Controller and City Attorney in half — it doesn’t go far enough.
They should all get the “living wage” they’re so proud of. So instead of $180,000 a year, or half that, they would be paid the same $14.50 per hour, or $10 per hour plus $4.50 toward health
insurance they awarded Wednesday to non-city workers at LAX.
Amid cheers and tears, the Council brushed aside all questions of costs and the impact on contractors, sub-contractors and the woebegone public to unanimously approve what amounts to as much as 30 percent raises for 5,000 low-income workers.
If they were honest about what they really believe, they would require that everyone in LA earn at least what city workers are paid with lucrative pensions and first-rate health insurance, that everyone actually work for the city or for the contractors, consultants, lobbyists that live off the city.
After all, City Hall has pursued this as an unspoken policy for years. It’s why I mock them for conducting a failed experiment in municipal socialism, an appropriate oxymoron for their futile efforts to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.
The actual impact of their policies has been to dramatically shrink the middle class and dramatically increase the poverty. The rich, of course, just keep getting richer as far as I can see, especially those who contribute heavily to political campaigns and buy the politicians fancy wines and expensive meals that never get reported on conflict of interest statements.
The living wage is not the problem. Except for the few who it benefits, it is nothing but a symbolic feel-good gesture.
The problem is those people who hold these high offices act like there is a bottomless pit of money to siphon off from the residents of the city.
This was also visible Wednesday when the living wage debate was interrupted by a hearing at which DWP officials were called on the carpet to answer softball (or were they just) ignorant questions about the bursting water main disasters in the Valley.
The Council’s newest member, Paul Koretz, showed how quickly he has fit into the City Hall mentality by gushing during the living wage debate: ““I think this is really a no-brainer for us…We can’t do less.”
And in the next breath, he suggested that the DWP’s $4 billion program to replace old water pipes should be accelerated no matter what it costs.
He called the broken pipe problem a “wake-up call,” which may be forgivable since he’s a carpetbagger who moved into LA from West Hollywood to run for the Council.
The rotting pipes and failing electrical grid problems are the direct result of taking DWP revenue and putting it into the inflated salaries and benefits of DWP workers and transferring what was left in the city treasury to pad the salaries and benefits of the rest of the city’s employees.
To hell with the infrastructure, to hell with clean energy, public be damned — those have been the official policies for far too long.
And now the bills are coming due. The city is running out of cash and bankruptcy looms but they keep on writing blank checks without any means of raising the money to cover them except borrowing more and more at ever higher interest rates.
I’m torn between metaphors to describe this, whether it’s more apt to see them like Nero and his fiddle or Marie Antoinette and her cake.
Both work well enough: LA is burning and the people are rebelling. It’s a crying shame things have to get so much worse before they get better.
In the 5 years since the $2.00 a month rate increase to pay for replacing the aging pipes, DWP has managed to replace less than 1/2 mile a year? Something is wrong with this picture.
“The Council’s newest member, Paul Koretz, showed how quickly he has fit into the CIty Hall mentality by gushing during the living wage debate: “”I think this is really a no-brainer for us…We can’t do less.”
You are as usual very accurate including “gushing” – thank you!!!!!
Why are we sticking with this out-grown
system of running our city? Surely, we
can come up with a better form of self-government
that this “GANG”! Or are we the ones who deserve
the gang because we are either too busy or too
dumb. Just asking.
Hope everybody is watching this Calif State Assembly Bill which would make it more difficult for the city to file bankruptcy.
It would also give the unions much more control over the bankruptcy.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/ab_155_bill_20090126_introduced.html
Couldn’t agree more about coucil salaries.
But…my first thought when I read the “cost of living” story early this morning was how many of them will really spend that money on health care?
My guess is none!
It will go into a sinkhole on par with the DWP’s, where DWP gives a portion of the rates we pay to the city for it’s general fund, and the city promptly wastes in a flood of spending.
In the workers’ case, half will immediately go to taxes; that doesn’t leave much for doctor or hospital visits.
What’s left over after taxes will evaporate from their own personal general funds and never be accounted for.
After six months or a year let’s ask them how much extra money — if any — they had for medical care.
Dear Ron Kaye:
I don’t know how to e-mail you my comments on your other articles, so here is one about your piece in SF Valley Community Connection, Sept. 200: “Sizing up the City Council Race”.
I’ve lived in Sherman Oaks since 1984 (at the same address)and was baffled by the 10 candidates for District No.2 Council. Your article was extremely illuminating, indicating who the 3 front runners (with money) were. I’m going to a meeting on Sept. 16 (at Notre Dame HS, 7:15pm) where all 10 will speak. I’m independent and plan to vote for whomever appeals to me in the primary. In the final I may have to compromise.Keep your stuff coming, it’s the only way to be informed about
our city government and agencies.
Walter Unterberg
If these workers are just getting an extra $4.50/hr for health care instead of the employers being required to provide coverage, then we can be sure most of them will just pocket that money, rather than put that $700/ month or so toward buying insurance for their family. In which case they’ll still use the clinics, ER’s and other such pricey services at our expense, undercutting the main argument for this, that it will take people out of the pool of uninsured. ALSO the employers sued when genius Hahn and Rosendahl pushed this through the last time (how much has it cost so far?) and are likely to again on grounds they’re being unfairly singled out. Alarcon claiming that this is how we need to create homeowners, who deserve that equity to fall back on when their kids get sick and so on, really sounds like the socialist some claim he is here.
Living wage movements and minimum wage raises are always pushed by the Unions. For altruistic purposes, you ask? Not a bit of it.
Every time the minimum wage goes up, the “living wage” goes up. Everything else gets pushed up as a result, right on up the line. In other words, when the bottom wages go up it puts upward pressure on union wages, too.
Union base pay now has to go up to “keep pace”. When union base pay goes up all the brackets above get a boost, too. It’s insidious.
When you own every single politician that sits across from you at the bargaining table, it’s a cinch you’ll get what you want, every time. It’s called owning the boss.
It used to be Big Labor versus Big Business. Now, Big Labor is Big Business.
The Tyranny of Los Angeles City Council member RICHARD ALARCON, former Chair of the Education and Neighborhoods Committee
Here is Alarcon’s ANTI-DEMOCRACY or ANTI-AMERICAN motion to move Public Comment toward the end of the Council meetings that was seconded by Council members JANICE HAHN, Godmother of Neighborhood Councils, DENNIS ZINE, Godfather of Neighborhood Councils, GREIG SMITH, and TONY CARDENAS.
It’s difficult to understand how this Council is attempting to bring the participatory democracy process back into the 19th Century.
Council File 09-2171
http://cityclerk.lacity.org
A Tale of Two Council Files (09-1890 and 09-2171)
Well, let’s stick with the ½ off for now. Not to castigate all lawyers…er, Law School gradiates, but somehow, given Villar’s active lifestyle, I think he’d find a way of billing for at least 169 hours a week…(you do the math)
As for the $4.50*40*40…makes for a nice policy, heck that’ll cover a family of four, and a few cuzins!
The least they could do is have it go into a tax exempt Healthcare Savings Account…
I hope everyone realizes that the contractors will simply pass the costs on to the City. The bids for jobs will come over priced to account for the “living” wage, and the public is the one who has to pay for it. Airports is proprietary, so the costs will be passed onto the concessionaires and the airlines, who in turn will pass it on to the patrons.
Ron – you are a professional communicator – a wordsmith – but maybe not a mathematician, so I will share with you what my sixth grade math teacher pointed out, “nothing can be cut IN half” – you always end up with two halves – in other words you cut something in two (not half) – you may reduce some intangible things BY half, like wages, volume of sales, time left to live, number of subscribers, attendees at a game, etc.
Some intangibles can’t be cut or reduced, like credibility or honesty as it relates to City Council or Mayors – how do you cut or reduce zero!
Yours for proper English
I read your article about CD2 in the SFV Community Connection. I find it very cowardly that while you seem tuned in to the corruption in the city council, you turn around and write only about the three people who, if elected, are by far the most likely to step right in line with the rest of the corruption at which you constantly point fingers.
Journalists should try something novel for a change, and quit assuming that the “major players” who start out with the big bucks are the only ones who stand a chance. If people in the media would write authentic pieces about grassroots candidates, it would tip the balance and real improvement could happen. But since you can’t think outside the most stereotypical election box there is, you play a significant role in keeping corrupt players in office.
People need to stop adopting “the lesser evil” as a starting point in elections, because it is a false and self-defeating assumption–and completely unnecessary. The only reason it ever comes down to that is because people like you refuse to give the REAL people a fighting chance from the get-go.
The City Council is the only protection we have from Villraigosa and his financial terrorists as they attempt to appease his largest campaign contributors, the Coalition of LA Unions.
The Council Members are beginning to understand that they cannot trust Villaraigosa or his numbers. The sale of the parking assets, the storm water parcel tax, the E-RIP, the ECAF, and the elephant in the room, the budget deficit for this year and even more so, next year.
Ron,
Everyone is asking where are the signature pages to sign on for the “1/2 OFF Salels on City Council Salaries” ballot measure. Ask Doug to get going and put them out there because there is a strong momentum right now of people very upset at the state of our city and the incompetence of our politicians.
The Times endorsement of Essel is some pretty fancy writing, complete with ad hominem attack on the others. The way they say she’d bring in more business, it’s a sop to Riordan and Shallman. So now we see who the Times answers to. Guess they’re trying to kiss and make up with Antonio.
LOL! I love this idea. Same goes for all those in Congress who are not so sure we need health care for all.
Let them live for 6 months without any kind of health insurance or coverage. Let them pay for their meds out of pocket, and tests, and doctor visits.
Even better, let them go to the free clinics like the poor do—but they will have to wait 3 months for an appt.
There are SO MANY people in L.A. County today who would be happy to make $14.50 an hour, myself included. Millions would be happy with that. Millions.
Great idea. Let them live on that for a month or three to see what it’s like. They don’t remember….
‘Not to snub the mathematician (9/11 @ 8:02 am) amongst us, but I do think Ron can say “cut in half” and still be mathematically correct, especially when it comes to City funds. In his defense (not that he asked for it) he never said that, once cut in half, there would only be half left. He said cut in half, meaning 50% off their present income. What becomes of the other half was not discussed. That is different than denying the existence of the remaining half. Though, in this case, Ron could argue that the other half does not exist.
In fact, the mere acknowledgement of that other half is dangerous. That assumes that there was a “whole” to start with and the city’s free to use that other “half” some other way. Given the present fiscal crises, that “whole” is up for question. How does one divide a pie into sections when there is no pie, or is that pi?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume there is that other half of those cut in two salaries. There were implications of what to do with that money. Paying the “contractors, sub-contractors and the woebegone public” the 30 percent taken from their pockets might be a good place for it. Or, starting a “pay back fund” for the DWP rate payers is another. The possibilities are endless, or is that infinity. But, isn’t that how we got into this mess?
September 10, 2009 9:13 AM , thank you for bring this to our attention.
Question: Although it is State law, is it legal?
I didn’t know the State could trump the Feds.
What’s the likelihood that this can be challenged with some degree of success?
4:35
Note who the Co-Authors are none other than John Perez (Mayor’s cuz) and Deleon among the Mayor’s henchmen.
9:31
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Okay, I don’t go along with a thing or two while the rest appears good.