Oakland’s well-paid police
Why is Oakland having to cut back on its police services, to the point of not responding to forty-four categories of crime, including grand theft? As Josh Barro writes, it depends on what the meaning of “afford” is:
At current levels of compensation, yes, Oakland cannot afford to maintain a police department with 776 employees. That’s because total compensation for an OPD employee averages an astounding $162,000 per year. But at a more reasonable level of pay and benefits, Oakland could afford to maintain its force, or even grow it.
Read the whole thing. And lest you think (as I initially did) that those levels of compensation are because Oakland is tangential to the high-priced city of San Francisco, think again, because Barro points out that:
The Oakland police recruiting website boasts that this is the most generous benefit package for police officers among California’s ten largest cities. And indeed, Oakland police pay even makes San Francisco look fiscally responsible — total compensation for SFPD employees averages just $145,000. If Oakland just matched San Francisco’s compensation levels, it could stay within its proposed budget and hire additional officers, instead of cutting jobs.
Oakland’s problem is just an exaggeration of one faced by many California municipalities, as well as others all over the country: the growth of the power of public sector unions. The swelling of the costs connected with them is threatening the solvency of those communities and those states that have let this happen.
In Oakland, the situation has reached ludicrous proportions. But Barro suggests some solutions:
Many options are available. States should consider abolishing collective bargaining in the public sector, which essentially allows unions to sit on both sides of the negotiating table. They should phase out defined-benefit pension systems, which hide costs and are placing an increasing burden on local budgets. They should cap the value of employee health benefits at a ratio to average private sector benefits — no more “Cadillac” health plans. They should liberalize civil service protections that lead to an inefficient workforce, as proposed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. And, where appropriate, they should freeze or cut employee wages that are higher than necessary to attract qualified talent.
The people of New Jersey have woken up to their similar situation and elected Chris Christie as a result. My own unofficial research tells me that the people of California are beginning to do the same, since some recent conversations with liberal friends and relatives there featured the (to me surprising) spontaneous statements by some of them that public sector compensation has gotten out of hand. Hmmm.
Were I czar, possessed of a time machine, I’d go back and forbid on pain of horrid, complicated execution, the offer or existence of any post-retirement benefit of any kind whatsoever.
Negotiators can, today, grin at each other, pretend to fight over the working man’s right to a decent standard of living, and stick the bill to a couple of generations hence, and get themselves a raise, too. No cost to the business currently, and the union gets the glory.
Wins all around.
Even defined benefit plans are supposed, SUPPOSED, to be funded on an actuarially sound basis, enforced by DOL and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. Fail.
Take the money supposedly going to the future and give it to the workers today and tell them to get their own bennies and their own savings.
I think now more than ever that liberals really did expect the economy and employment to expand under their policies of the past 18 months. Instead the economy has tanked and put a laser like focus on the sheer unsustainability of their economic ideas, past, present and future.
Theres great irony in how the collectivist are being foiled by….the collective.
Your friends may be the tip of the iceberg…or not. Mickey Kaus who made the point about the growth and pernicious influence of the unions only earned 100,000 votes. Of course he had no staff or budget. Personally I doubt any seismic change will occur. A few tremors and nothing else for another 2-4 years.
The problem isn’t just the public sector unions. Executives sometimes are overpaid as well. Here’s the ultimate example, a city manager in a city of 36,000 being paid $800,000 a year, twice what Obama makes, though they don’t throw in a big white house:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/topic/la-me-0716-bell-residents-20100716,0,1384235.story?track=rss-topicgallery
Neo– apologies for going OT, but since that this thread is about compensation, have you seen Sara Hamdan’s article at First Things on the bleak future of dance? Given your love of ballet, you will want to read it (warning: it’s a long article but well worth the time):
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/07/last-rites
Refudiating ( 😉 gotta love the new Palinism) the entirety of the liberal economic theory (no Ph.d from the University of Chicago necessary)
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”
Ah, but that’s because they didn’t have the Right People in charge. If they did…paradise!
Even FDR was against the idea of public unions.
“The people of New Jersey have woken up to their similar situation and elected Chris Christie as a result.”
The people of New Jersey have had a lot more to deal with – just read the book titled “The Soprano State.”
Some of what has gone on in Jersey just makes me sick! My own county, Monmouth, (as mentioned in the book) paid $50,000 (small peanuts in the grand scheme of things; but it is still tax dollars) for a study to determine if the county should pay their lawyers a flat annual salary or a fee based upon incident. And guess who was paid to conduct that study? That’s right, the county lawyers who will benefit from the result of that study. And this was legal!
NJ taxpayers are just tired of all the sh*t that goes on.
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