Tag Archive for: CCPOA

Sacramento Loses Its Finest Legislator

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On November 13, ten days after the election, and facing final counts that made any chance of victory impossible, California State Senator John Moorlach (R-37) conceded defeat to his challenger, Democrat David Min.

Reached for comment, Moorlach said “we worked hard on fundraising, the ground game, the phone calls; we worked hard, and we had a great team, but the Democratic party in Orange County is very organized.”

Moorlach is being polite. His defeat is because the prison guards union spent nearly one million dollars to back the campaign of his opponent. How Moorlach lost exemplifies the political power of public sector unions in California, and how their agenda is inherently in conflict with the public interest.

A revealing article just published by the Sacramento Bee goes through the political spending by CCPOA this election. The pattern is clear: CCPOA supports strong law and order candidates and initiatives, unless they are in conflict with their primary objective, which is to expand their membership and increase the pay and benefits of their members.

The article also explains how the CCPOA’s new president, Glen Stailey, has embarked on a “push to regain the union’s former political might.” But to do that, in this new era where literally scores of newly minted leftist billionaires in Silicon Valley are willing to spend whatever it takes to establish their political might, CCPOA needs allies.

For this reason, it might have served CCPOA’s purposes better if they’d focused more on helping Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey defend her office, since she lost to the progressive George Gascon. The only upside to Gascon’s victory is he will pursue more of the policies that have already turned huge sections of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes of filth and anarchy, which we may hope will accelerate the past-due awakening of voters to the fact that progressive politics are a destructive fraud.

It might also have served the purposes of the CCPOA better if they’d taken some of the nearly one million dollars they spent to defeat John Moorlach and added it to the $2 million they spent to support failed Proposition 20, which would have stiffened prison sentences and restricted parole. It is difficult to imagine how Californians are ever going to regain control of their streets, so long as hard drug use, vagrancy and petty theft continue unchecked.

With these compelling political priorities, why on earth would the CCPOA also decide to take on John Moorlach, a conservative from Orange County? The answer is disappointing. Moorlach has two qualities that make him a threat to CCPOA, along with all other public sector unions: he is a strong communicator, able to use reason and tact to forge bipartisan consensus on legislation, and he is a Certified Public Accountant experienced in public sector bankruptcies.

These twin attributes mean that when Senator Moorlach talked about the fact that California’s state prisons charge nearly $85,000 to house one inmate for one year, and California’s private prisons can do the same job for less than one-third that amount, other politicians listen. They mean that when Moorlach describes how California’s full time state prison guards make on average $158,000 per year in pay and benefits, more than twice what they make in most other states, other politicians listen. They mean that when Moorlach explains how pension benefit obligations are going to break public sector budgets, and offers solutions to fix the problem, other politicians listen.

That could not be tolerated. Moorlach had to go.

Enter Dave Min, a lifelong Democrat who once served as an economic advisor to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has minimal experience in the private sector. Min is currently employed as a professor of law at UC Irvine, an institution of higher learning that is probably only eclipsed, and only barely, by UCLA as the biggest academic bastion of liberal insanity in all of Southern California.

As a career public employee, Min will have plenty of company in the California State Legislature. It’s overwhelmingly Democratic members are overwhelmingly lacking in private sector experience. An analysis by the California Policy Center of California’s 2019-20 state senate found that 79 percent of the Democrats have no private sector experience. None. And it looks like come January 2021, Democrats will fill 31 of the 40 seats in the upper house of the California State Legislature.

These financially challenged, union compliant bobbleheads are the people that decide what sorts of laws and regulations California’s residents and businesses will have to live with. And when times are good, or even just good enough, they can go on committing political malpractice, because California’s economy is so big, its high tech sector so wealthy, and its weather so fantastic, that it will take a very long time before a populist rebellion actually overwhelms the power of unions and billionaires. But that time will come.

Californians are not going to accept the ongoing explosion of lawlessness in their state. They aren’t going to tolerate having their streets controlled by vagrants, predators, addicts, thieves, alcoholics, schizophrenics, and anarchists. Their tolerance for those genuinely in need has its limits, and sooner or later, voters are going to demand new forms of supervised incarceration. Not just to get these hundreds of thousands of people off the streets, but to help them in ways that are affordable, practical, effective and humane.

When those hard choices have to be made, California’s Democratic politicians are going to have nothing to offer. They didn’t have to raise money because the unions and the progressive billionaires just laid it out for them. They didn’t have to come up with policies because the unions and the progressive billionaires told them how to think. They didn’t develop the nerves and adaptability that is a prerequisite for success in the private sector, because they never worked in the private sector.

It will be in these times, coming soon, that California’s public sector unions are going to need independent, creative thinkers like Senator Moorlach. When it comes time to balance the needs of the CCPOA with the practical limits of budget realities, and invent new ways to incarcerate and help victims of their own addictions and illnesses, John Moorlach is the type of politician California needs.

Someday, the CCPOA may very well wish they had not worked so hard to send home a man who was quite likely California’s finest state legislator.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Why is the Prison Guards Union Targeting Senator Moorlach?

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In a tight race, incumbent Republican state senator John Moorlach has been targeted by the prison guards union. In a report filed on October 1, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association Independent Expenditure Committee disclosed spending $910,705 on cable television ads and mailers opposing Moorlach.

Running to unseat Senator Moorlach is Democrat David Min, whose campaign website leaves no doubt as to how he’s going to vote once he gets elected. His endorsements constitute a revealing list of who really runs California; public sector unions representing teachers, firefighters, nurses, AFSCME, the SEIU and dozens of others. While other special interests, in particular, powerful environmentalist pressure groups and high tech billionaires, exercise significant influence over California’s Democrats, the government employee unions are the senior partners.

It is nonetheless inexplicable why the CCPOA would oppose Moorlach in favor of an orthodox California Democrat who is much more likely to support Newsom’s intention to close two of California’s prisons. What could possibly override that very real threat to the interests of a union representing prison guards?

Understanding this apparent contradiction is key to understanding the priorities of public sector unions in California. Perhaps CCPOA is banking on public backlash to the anarchy overwhelming California’s cities to ultimately preclude prison closures. On the other hand, perhaps the CCPOA sees Moorlach’s ability to work with Democrats to enact pension reform as a genuine threat.

Senator John Moorlach is the most financially literate, articulate and outspoken champion of fiscal responsibility in the California State Legislature, and has been since he took office. He is capable of explaining to Democrats the urgency of pension reform. As federal bailout money begins to run out, and the deferred impact of the pandemic shutdown puts California’s state and local government agencies into an acute financial crisis, Moorlach’s presence in the state legislature could spell the difference between making necessary changes to pension benefit formulas, and maintaining them unaltered regardless of the cost.

A review of the legislation that Moorlach has sponsored over the past few years shows him to be a very different legislator than the “anti-science” politician with “extreme views” as alleged on a website paid for by his opponents with the grossly misleading URL “johnmoorlachforsenate.com.” In fact, Moorlach’s bills, most of which were killed by the Democrats, are practical, non-ideological attempts to make government more transparent and accountable, efficient, and fiscally sustainable.

During times of surplus cash flows, accumulating debt and unfunded liabilities can be ignored, as can grossly expanded expenditures. But when the next financial crunch arrives, and it will, Moorlach’s presence in the California State Legislature will become a serious threat to the status-quo. Bills he’s previously introduced and had rejected will be resubmitted, and Moorlach will both make the case and provide the political cover for their possible passage.

For example, in 2018, Moorlach introduced SB 1033, which would have forced agencies that take actions which increase a pension liability to take full financial responsibility for the increase. As it is, when an agency takes an action that increases the amount of a pension liability, all the agencies where any of the benefiting employees previously worked have to help cover that increase, even though they had no voice in its approval.

In 2017, Moorlach introduced SB 32, which merely attempted to enact some of the reforms that Governor Brown had hoped to include in his 2013 Public Employee Pension Reform Act (PEPRA). Also in 2017, Moorlach tried to rein in retiree medical costs with SB 454. All of these fiscal reforms proposed by Moorlach, and others, were shot down by the Democratic leadership. But some Democrats supported them. In a tighter economy, Moorlach could introduce reforms like this and they could be passed.

Is this the real reason nearly every public sector union in California, even the CCPOA, are determined to get John Moorlach out of office? Moorlach can explain why, in terms everyone can understand, public employee retirement benefits are unaffordable and unfair to taxpayers. And once you’ve created an extraordinarily privileged class of public employees, largely exempt from the economic hardship which is a direct result of policies it supported, financial truth is a dangerous thing.

A final irony in all this is the apparent fact that even the threat to close prisons does not animate the CCPOA as much as getting rid of a politician that might successfully build a consensus to reformulate their pensions. Republicans in general, and Senator Moorlach in particular, are far more supportive of law enforcement than Democrats.

After all, it wasn’t Republicans, or Senator Moorlach, who pushed for disastrous initiatives such as Prop. 47 that downgraded drug and property crimes, or Prop. 57 that put many dangerous felons back on the streets. It wasn’t Republicans, or Senator Moorlach, that pushed for and passed ridiculous legislation such as AB 953 that requires police to fill out reports on the race and sex and gender identity of every person they pull over or otherwise interact with. It wasn’t Republicans, or Senator Moorlach who pushed the state legislature to eliminate bail in SB 10. The list goes on. And it wasn’t Republicans, or Senator Moorlach, who are trying to shut down California’s prisons.

Public sector union members and their leadership are urged to adapt to the financial tsunami that is coming ashore. Tough financial concessions are inevitable, no matter who is in office. With that as a given, they ought to back politicians who will be easier on small businesses to grow the economy and the tax base, and tougher on criminals to take back our streets – not the other way around.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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How Can California Reduce the Costs of Incarceration?

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has agreed to give state prison correctional officers a 3 percent raise. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, there is “no evident justification” for this raise.

A recent article in the Sacramento Bee summarizes portions of the LAO report, writing “The last time the state compared state correctional officers’ salaries to their local government counterparts, in 2013, state correctional officers made 40 percent more than officers in county-run jails, according to the LAO analysis,” and, “Since 2013, salary increases for state correctional officers have increased by a compounded 24 percent, according to the LAO.”

Within the LAO report, it is made clear that the rising cost for pensions is a major factor in escalating compensation costs for California’s prison guards. In theory, the cost to provide pension benefits is reasonable. The so-called “normal cost” of a pension is how much you have to pay if your pension system is fully funded. Unfortunately, that’s a big if. Today, the normal cost is only a small fraction of total pension costs. Most of the money going to CalPERS is to pay down their unfunded liability, built up over years of insufficient annual payments, along with lower than projected investment returns, and benefit enhancements that were justified using overly optimistic financial projections. CalPERS, the pension system that serves the California Correctional Officers, is underfunded by at least $138 billion. It is only 71 percent funded.

To see how this translates into the cost of individual pension benefits for California’s prison guards, useful information can be had by downloading raw data for state agencies from the California State Controller’s “public pay” online database. For example, using the most recent available data from the State Controller, in 2017 there were 21,558 prison guards who worked full time that year and were eligible for a “3@50” pension (pension equals three percent, times years worked, times final year base pay – eligibility at age 50). The average base pay for these guards was $87,460. Their average pension cost was $40,061, forty five percent.

State Controller data also offers insight into how much the modest PEPRA reforms of 2013 reduced pension costs, since California’s Dept. of Corrections also had 7,161 prison guards who in 2017 worked full time and were eligible for a “2.5@55” pension – in some cases this reduction was due to PEPRA. Their average base pay was $93,054, and their average pension contribution was $21,716, which equates to 23 percent, only half as much.

It’s easy to rail against the pay and pension benefits collected by public employees in California. And in the case of overpaid, underworked state and local bureaucrats who often are incompetent and indifferent towards business owners and homeowners who are trying in good faith to navigate California’s ridiculously excessive rules and regulations, that ire is appropriate. But before leveling that criticism at California’s correctional officers, one might consider what it takes to manage the criminally insane, or members of international gangs with friends inside and outside of prison, or, for that matter, the general prison population of thieves, thugs, wastrels and predators. If it’s such a cush job, go apply.

Nonetheless, especially when it comes to California’s pensions, something’s got to give. One solution which could be done overnight, without legislation or litigation if the CCPOA would agree, would be to reduce the pension multiplier from 3.0 percent to 2.5 percent for all future work by all correctional officers regardless of hire date. The three percent accrual for work performed to-date would be preserved. This single change could save the state tens of billions.

Government union members need to understand something unequivocally: There is no special interest in California that even approaches government unions in terms of raw political power. With great power comes great responsibility.  Conscientious members of these unions should demand this power is used for the common good.

In the case of the prison guards, that would not only involve a voluntary, and significant concession on the question of pensions, as described. It would involve aggressive political involvement in correcting some huge, and very recent, policy mistakes. To cite just one example, California’s Prop. 47, the so called “get out of jail free” law, needs to be repealed through a ballot initiative. Somehow, the tens of thousands of drug addicts, drunks, and mentally ill who currently constitute the bulk of California’s unsheltered homeless need to be cost-effectively reincarcerated.

California’s prison guards union can and should play a productive role in reforming the laws that prevent society from getting these most problematic of the homeless off the streets. They should then work creatively with legislators and local authorities to figure out how best to help these people. Why can’t state and local mental health professionals in partnership with the Dept. of Corrections build less expensive work camps for nonviolent addicts and alcoholics, where they could dry out and contribute to society? Why does it have to cost $71,000 per year to incarcerate the average prisoner in California? Why are comparable amounts necessary to shelter the homeless? This is ridiculous.

There’s more. Instead of demanding annual raises in an attempt to cope with the cost-of-living in California, why aren’t government unions supporting policies that might lower California’s cost-of-living? Support an overhaul of California’s excessive environmentalist legislation – why does it take six years or more to build an apartment building in California, when it only takes months in other states? Support deregulation of land development, because high-density infill is an exercise in futility unless it’s matched by new construction on open land within this vast, nearly empty state. Support nuclear power, and reform ill-conceived renewables mandates. Et cetera.

California’s prison guards union may wish to think outside the cell.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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