Results tagged “ERIP” from Ron Kaye L.A.

For all the mayor and City Council's threat to lay off up to 4,000 city workers on top of the 2,400 paid off to retire and the 400 or so who got transferred to non-general fund jobs, the mayor sent a letter to the Council on Monday outlining his strategy for the 2010-11 budget year. About 750 actual workers face layoffs or more likely transfers. Go to OurLA.org to see the list of 3,546 positions affected by his moves. Here's the mayor's letter:

Dear Honorable Members of the City Council:

I am transmitting for your information the list of position eliminations that are currently incorporated as part of my proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2010-11. The service impacts and cost savings related to the elimination of these positions will be presented as part of my budget submission tomorrow.

The list totals 3,546 positions; including both Regular and Resolution positions. The funding sources for these positions are both General Fund and Special Funds. These eliminations incorporate positions that have been vacated as a result of regular attrition, the Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP), expedited transfers to special fund positions and proprietary departments, and layoffs.

According to preliminary information from departments, approximately 750 positions may be currently filled by individuals that will result in displacements to other departments and layoffs.

Please note this list of position eliminations only portrays a portion of the budget solutions I have relied upon to present a balanced budget for Fiscal Year 2010-11. My office stands ready to discuss these proposed position eliminations as part of the City Council's budget deliberation process.

Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor

 

The average pension city workers are getting under the Early Retirement Incentive Program is $51,887 but the figure will go even higher when the five years' extra credit is calculated for those who retired between June and December.

Under a California Public Records Act filed by OurLA.org, LACERS officials released the full list of 1159 workers those who retired through the end of February.

The smallest pension is for $111 a month or $1,336 a year for a part-time crossing guard. The biggest is for $14,662 a month or $175,948 a year for a deputy city engineer.

Both of them retired before the final deadline for requesting ERIP on Dec. 15 so their pensions do not yet reflect 5 years' extra service credit that could add more then 12 percent to their retirement checks. The same is true for more than 300 workers who were "grandfathered" into ERIP before the deadline.

LACERS officials have crossed the halfway point in processing 2,400 city employees off the general fund payroll under the Early Retirement Incentive Program.

More than 1,500 city workers eligible for ERIP have retired in the last nine months compared to the 500 LACERS normally handles in a year.

The list made available is complete through February and more than 350 were processed in March. Figures for their pensions will be made available later.

Among the 1,159 on the list, 44 are getting pensions of more than $100,000 and 36 less than $20,000.

The eligibility for ERIP benefits potentially "Grandfathered Participants" will be clarified soon and retroactive benefit calculations will occur in a few months.

Here is the list complete through the end of February:

Class/Title                                                   Retire Date          Monthly             Annual

DEPUTY CITY ENGINEER I, II	07/18/09	$14,662.36	$175,948.32
SR ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$11,977.50	$143,730.00
ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$11,721.90	$140,662.80
ASST CITY ATTY	11/01/09	$11,497.14	$137,965.68
ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$11,258.26	$135,099.12
DEPT CHIEF ACCT I, II, III, IV	08/29/09	$11,223.63	$134,683.56
PR CIVIL ENGINEER	01/02/10	$11,202.35	$134,428.20
ASST CITY ATTY	01/02/10	$11,017.93	$132,215.16
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	02/13/10	$10,967.13	$131,605.56
ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$10,590.61	$127,087.32
ASST CH LEGISLAT ANLYST	02/13/10	$10,546.27	$126,555.24
ASSISTANT GM MANAGER PENSION	01/02/10	$10,484.57	$125,814.84
DEPUTY G M AIRPT / 2	02/13/10	$10,476.02	$125,712.24
ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$10,459.33	$125,511.96
PR TRANSPORT ENGR	02/13/10	$10,155.87	$121,870.44
CH ADMIN ANALYST	08/18/09	$10,143.88	$121,726.56
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	01/02/10	$9,929.70	$119,156.40
STREET SVCS GN SUPT I, II	07/18/09	$9,906.72	$118,880.64
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	01/02/10	$9,760.78	$117,129.36
POLICE ADMN. I, II, III	07/11/09	$9,717.31	$116,607.72
ASST CITY ATTY	10/30/09	$9,640.28	$115,683.36
SR STREET LGT ENGINEER	10/17/09	$9,631.75	$115,581.00
ASST GM INFORM TECH DPT	08/29/09	$9,582.17	$114,986.04
DEPUTY SUPT OF BLDG I, II	10/31/09	$9,575.31	$114,903.72
PR DEPUTY CONTROLLER	08/05/09	$9,545.40	$114,544.80
CH MGMT ANALYST	07/18/09	$9,476.85	$113,722.20
ASST DEP SUP OF BLDG I, II	02/13/10	$9,419.16	$113,029.92
ASST CITY ATTY	02/13/10	$9,403.54	$112,842.48
CIVIL ENGINEER	10/21/09	$9,389.98	$112,679.76
SR MGMT ANALYST I, II,	01/02/10	$9,332.48	$111,989.76
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	02/13/10	$9,284.53	$111,414.36
DIR OF MAINT AIRPORTS I, II	01/02/10	$9,168.84	$110,026.08
ASST CITY ATTY	10/10/09	$9,130.59	$109,567.08
PORT PILOT I, II	08/26/09	$9,066.93	$108,803.16
PR CITY PLANNER	01/02/10	$8,993.78	$107,925.36
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	01/02/10	$8,970.96	$107,651.52
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	08/01/09	$8,893.55	$106,722.60
STREET SVCS GN SUPT I, II	07/31/09	$8,875.25	$106,503.00
SR TRANSPORT ENGINEER	10/30/09	$8,819.02	$105,828.24
SR MGMT ANALYST I, II,	01/02/10	$8,769.32	$105,231.84
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	02/13/10	$8,767.92	$105,215.04
INFOR SYST MGR I, II	02/13/10	$8,749.23	$104,990.76
CH CREATIVE SERV DIV	08/01/09	$8,730.04	$104,760.48
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	01/02/10	$8,714.95	$104,579.40
BUILD CON & MT GN SUP I, II	01/02/10	$8,705.15	$104,461.80
PORT PILOT I, II	12/18/09	$8,646.74	$103,760.88
PR CITY PLANNER	09/12/09	$8,549.36	$102,592.32
DEPUTY CITY ATTY IV	09/20/09	$8,431.50	$101,178.00
SR MGMT ANALYST I, II,	02/13/10	$8,400.31	$100,803.72
INFOR SYST MGR I, II	10/10/09	$8,374.18	$100,490.16

In the first six months after City Hall offered the Early Retirement Incentive Pprgram, 625 workers have actually retired with pensions averaging more than $1,000 a week with 32 of them getting pensions in excess of $100,000 a year, according to records obtained by OurLA.org. under the California Public Records Act.

Read who joined the city's nearly 1,000 members of the Six-Figure Pension Club and the list of the 625 who retired since enhanced pensions were offer to city workers and how much they get monthly at yearly. Go to OurLA.org.

The word is leaking out of City Hall from all directions: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is moving swiftly to get rid of 1,000 or more of the youngest and lowest-paid city workers without a strategic plan to preserve services or get rid of the people he once called "deadwood."

The mayor, who increasingly is showing signs of panic in the face of the budget crisis, has called department heads to a meeting Tuesday afternoon with the goal of making it clear that the target of his layoff plan are those with less than five years employment with the city.

He also is asking for a list of what public services they recommend eliminating and has drawn a line against cuts in police. It's unlikely he will hit the Fire Department given LA's propensity for natural disasters.

Those public safety departments account for half of all general fund spending.so the impact on other city departments, already are losing 2,763 workers to the Early Retirement Incentive Program, will be enormous.

Although the question of layoffs was raised nearly a year ago, there has been no strategic planning on how to minimize the impact on important services to the public. In fact, the City Council has repeatedly emphasized protecting functions that generate revenue instead of those that provide general public services.

The ERIP itself has been a disaster for many departments with key senior managers deciding to retire with $15,000 in cash and pensions sweetened with five years extra service credit, enhancing pensions by about 12 percent.

Those retirements have left gaping holes in the ability of some departments to operate and the random elimination of those at the bottom who actually do much of the work will compound the chaos and further degrade city services.

Union leaders are set to meet Friday with top officials and appear to be ready to fight even as many of their rank-and-file members are challenging the decisions they made on ERIP and new contracts that contained hollow promises of no layoffs and deferred pay raises.

The business community and Neighborhood Council leaders have stressed that pension reform is the critical issue since the burden of a $10.5 billion unfunded pension liability is draining the general fund and pushing the city toward bankruptcy.

The deadline for applying for the city's costly Early Retirement Incentive Program passed at 5 p.m. Wednesday with more than 3,100 workers seeking the deal limited to 2,400.

Read the full story at OurLA.org -- the community-based news and information website for Los Angeles. OurLA.org is an innovative non-profit site that relies on citizen and professional journalists and needs your support and participation

In keeping with the season we need to consider whether our city's leaders deserve our forgiveness because they really don't know what they are doing.

Are they ignorant and incompetent - in a word innocent? Or are they incompetent and conniving - in a word guilty.

Personally, I think both are true to one extent or another. They are blinded by their mantras of nobility, virtue and superiority and see the world through the bubble of City Hall consciousness where it all makes sense, where the goal has become the perpetuation of themselves and the system - not service to the public and bringing to life a great city.

As far as I can see the mayor and City Council have done about as poorly as is humanly possible in recent years unless you believe all their claims of success are as valid their boasts about sharp reduction in crime.

Asst. CAO Tom Coultas and Personnel Head Maggie Whelan stood their ground Friday and told it like it is to the LA City Council when grilled about the chaos that might ensue at City Hall in coming weeks as 2,400 workers quit their jobs under the city Early Retirement Incentive Program. Coultas repeatedly pointed out the Council and mayor approved the ERIP plan despite clear warnings about its flaws in and out of City Hall and without regard for the problems in implementing it. Coultas had good reason to keep a smile on his face until this moment of truth -- he's among the 2,900 who have over-subscribed the plan. 

. "THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING, NEXT YEAR IS WORSE"

PART I:



PART ii:

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Read Perr'sy her lips while Rosendahl prattles::

But Who Will Staff Libraries and Parks and Drive the Garbage Trucks

ERIP Season has finally arrived and more than 1,600 city workers (ERIP List.pdf) lined up on the first two days to take advantage of City Hall's generous offer to allow them to retire five years early with sweetened retirement benefits.

It's an offer they couldn't refuse. Would you?

Even SEIU Local 721 president Bob Schoonover, the heavy duty equipment mechanic in General Services who helped negotiate the deal, couldn't fight off the temptation to call it a day.

Nor could 130 other employees in his department or rnearly 400 in Public Works, including 30 garbage truck drivers or or 160 LAPD civilians, 120 at the Airports, 110 in Rec & Parks, 90 in the Libraries, 80 in Building and Safety, even 60 in the much smaller City Administrative Office and 50 in Information and Technology.

Undoubtedly, the number of volunteers for the Early Retirement Incentive Package will swell well beyond the 2,400 slots allotted for the costly program  -- costly because of the 12 percent in enhanced pensions, $15,000 each in cash, and all the unused vacation time, sick time, comp time and other payouts due workers who retire.

None of the promised  payroll savings will even start to occur until after the first of the year and even then, the savings will be diminished by all the people who get promoted into the senior positions held by the retirees and all the backfilling of "mission critical" jobs that managers will plead for.

The only certainties are that libraries will open late on Fridays and there won't be many librarians to help the public, that parks programs will be reduced, housing violations will go uncited, planning documents go unwritten, a vast array of public services undelivered

I can only wonder if the tripled trash fee imposed on home owners in the name of "full cost recovery" (the one that wasn't used solely to hire more cops as promised) will be reduced now that 150 Sanitation workers have asked for early retirement and other might soon join them.

Understand that we are now five months into the fiscal year and still have a $400 million deficit, nearly 10 percent of the operating budget. Almost no money has been saved, spending still exceeds revenue by at least a million dollars a day, and even with the theoretical savings from ERIP and new contracts with police and civilian workers, there is still a paper deficit of more than $100 million.

The battle over the $405 million city budget deficit is far from over despite all the self-congratulatory back-slapping and expressions of undying love last Friday.

The terms of endearment agreed to by the 22,000-member Coalition of City Unions and a unanimous City Council -- with the exceptions of Tom LaBonge and Tony Cardenas who didn't bother to show up to deal with this crisis -- provides only $78 million in total savings.

Some $20 million of that goes to restoring part of the $100 million already stolen from the emergency reserve fund. The rest goes into the general fund to pay the full the cost over 15 year for the Early Retirement Incentive Package (ERIP) for 2,400 lucky workers who get to retire as young as age 50 with the five years of service credits.

City workers' contributions will rise from 6 percent to 7.07 percent instead of the 6.75 percent in the June 26 deal. The early retirees getting a 12.5 percent boost in their pensions also will pay 1 percent for 15 years.

Other terms include deferring this and next year's cost-of-living raises for two years, requiring overtime be paid in compensatory time-off not cash, furloughs that amount to 30 minutes a week for the rest of year and half pay for holidays with the rest in more comp time,

As many workers will be transferred from general fund jobs to the Harbor, Airport and DWP -- especially the DWP -- payrolls whether they are needed or not since those are independent agencies with their own revenue streams and almost no effective public scrutiny.

They also will be looting all three agencies for services -- real or ficititious -- as much as they can get away with.

Then, there's the pay-later provisions: Cash payments for unused sick time normally made in January will be paid next August, the $15,000 golden handshake for early retirees will be paid next year and the year after, boot and uniform allowances will be paid next year as will City Attorneys fees to the California Bar.

In addition, any workers who wants an 8-day, 72-hour work schedule can have it and pensions will only be calculated with one of the many regular bonuses offered city workers to do their jobs instead of adding them all up.

Finally, if the economic miracle that this deal depends on actually comes true, much of the money will go back to city workers.

That's the deal, at least all we know about it, thanks to the unions sharing the information to their members, information our elected officials refuse to divulge because they don't see any reason why taxpayers should know what's really going on.

Not all city workers are happy about this.

The Engineers and Architects (EAA), for instance, get screwed again with one furlough day every two weeks, which is equal to a temporary 10 percent pay cut, and now will be hit with the only layoffs as well. As I understand it, 400 of EAA's 6,600 members -- city planners, technology people, auditors, criminalists and other white-collar professionals -- will get the axe because they have refused to be taken over so far by the SEIU which so deftly uses members' money to buy our city officials.

There's also a rump group of troublemakers who have set up LA CITY WORKERS.com . in an effort to build opposition to approval of the deal.

Fat chance. The vote on the deal will take place at a public meeting in two weeks where anyone who stands up to the union bosses is putting their life, at least their working life, on the liine.

An even bigger problem exists: Firefighters and police officers.

The deal approved by the Council on Friday furloughs cops one day every two weeks, halts hiring of new officers, puts cadets on notice of termination after completing their training and bars the Fire Department and Police Department " from entering into any new personal services or consulting contracts to perform work that would have been performed by sworn employees subject to the furloughs, layoffs, or other position reduction measures."

These provisions are nothing but a public relations exercise and bargaining tool.

They know damn well the public wants cops and firefighters protecting lives and property a lot more than the hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year on social welfare programs and salves to special interest communities.

They count on us crying out against against the perils of anarchy in this gang-infested city and the perils of fire, flood and earthquake without adequate emergency services.

What this is about is giving the leaders of the fire and police unions, whose contracts expired three months ago, an excuse to make the same kind of modest concessions the other unions have made.

The trouble is deferring payoffs and raises until next year or the year after doesn't solve anything at all.

City Hall doesn't have the skill or the will to keep costs under control as they have promised as part of this deal and their rosy estimates of revenue will almost certainly fall short of reality.

The likelihood is that the city will face a cash crisis before this fiscal year is over. The certainty is that the city's financial condition will be much worse next year and the years after as the deferred bills come due and pension costs double and triple.

More than a year ago, I said LA had reached the point of no return. Things have gotten a lot worse since then and the actions of the mayor and City Council have compounded the depth of the problem.

If the business community and the residents of the city don't make a stand now and come together to take back City Hall, it will be too late when the libraries and parks close, the 911 emergency calls go unanswered and chaos ensues.

It's now or never.

No. 34 -- that's how many water main breaks it takes in a two-week period for the City Council to start demanding answers from the DWP about why the blowouts are occurring.

Almost from the first blowout at Coldwater Canyon, outside engineers have speculated about whether limiting lawn sprinkling to just two days a week overstressed the rotting water pipe system with pressure surges, and many skeptical residents wondered if the whole problem was just another dirty DWP trick to squeeze a billion dollars or so more out of ratepayers.

I bring this up because it raises the issue at the heart of so much that's wrong with the way LA is managed: Competence.

DWP officials routinely fob off the Board of Commissioners, the Council and the public with answers like LA has :fewer water leaks than other comparable cities" or the "the inquiry is not complete." 

Scratch the surface of almost anything City Hall does and you see the same kind of acceptance of non-answers, lack of transparency, managerial effectiveness. Incompetence is the word for it.

This is a critically important question now that the Mayor and Council have declared a $325 million deficit represents a balanced budget because unions and bureaucrats are working together like a loving family to manage the city's finances day-to-day to avoid the chaotic catastrophe that going bankrupt would cause.

How's the seven-year effort to get an effective billboard policy going or even to identify where the thousands of illegal billboards are? Or the promise to deliver updated community plans that protect neighborhoods? Or the million trees? Or the greenest city in the nation? Or dozens of other unkept promises and unresolved issues?

I concede crime is down and LA is the safest big city in America, at least one of them, and violence is down to 1950s levels, or is it?

Just look at the 30 whereas-es in the resolution the Council adopted Friday to fix the budget crisis, declare a fiscal emergency, furlough police officers two days a month, halt police hiring, subject police trainees to probationary termination and ban the Fire and Police Departments from outside contracting for consulting or other services.

By my count, the resolution contains 15 specific things that have gone haywire in the three months since the budget took effect and the unions were offered a sweetheart early retirement (ERIP) deal:

1. ERIP salary savings $23 million, not $111 million
2. Only half the ERIP salary savings can go into the general fund.
3. Employee contribution of .75 percent extra far short of covering cost of early retirement.
4. $10 million savings lost because 400 layoffs anticipated in budget not implemented.
5. $16.5 million savings lost because furloughs not implemented.
6. $75 million short in estimated tax revenue
7. $89 million in extra liability claims.
8. $5.8 million  in extra subsidies for the poor to cover solid waste fees.
9. $247 million cost increase this year -- $1 million per working day -- over failure to win civilian and sworn  labor concessions by expected deadlines.
10. Unknown loss of revenue due to state budget crisis.
11. $100 million taken from Reserve Fund to meet excess costs, leaving less than $150 million which could be exhausted by May.
12. $1.1 million for Station Fire.
13, $46 million less for Reserve Fund from carryover from last year that already was spent.
14. $13 million in Fire Department savings lost because of failure of negotiations.
15. $129 million in LAPD savings lost because of failure of negotiations.

If they were that far off the mark just three months ago, why would anyone believe they can do any better over the next nine months or next year when the deficit doubles or when it triples in the following years?

It's a question of trust. And for my money -- and yours -- you can't trust people who cause more problems than they solve, who spent more money that the city took in for years, did nothing about it when it became a problem and offer nothing more than a "trust us" solution as they did on Friday when let the city's budget woes had become a true crisis.

I say put a "No Confidence" measure to a vote on the June primary ballot and we'll see how the electorate feels about a City Hall that routinely sells out the public interest to special interests.

With regard to unions, here's how Councilman Bernard Parks put it recently before he succumbed at the end of a week of back room negotiations and closed door sessions on how to spin the public:




COMING NEXT: Terms of Endearment: The Deal