Tag Archive for: public safety compensation

Public Safety Compensation and Public Safety

Public sector unions are by far the most powerful special interest in California. And they are united in their goal to pay themselves as much or more than public agencies can afford, which shields unionized public servants from the worst effects of the laws (which they almost always support) that have made California’s cost-of-living the highest in the nation. But there are also significant differences between the various public sector unions in California.

Whatever else one might say about public safety unions, they have not undermined the quality of their profession. To the extent public safety in California is compromised, for the most part that is caused by policies the public safety unions unsuccessfully opposed including Prop. 47, Prop. 57AB 109, and AB 953.

This is in sharp contrast to California’s teachers unions, which by their opposition to charter schools and desperately needed union work rule reforms such as attempted in the Vergara lawsuit, make unconvincing their claims to care about results.

Any criticism of public safety unions should be in this context. Nonetheless, the case must be made that police and firefighter compensation in California has reached a level where at the least it is appropriate to replace their services whenever possible with less expensive solutions.

With respect to firefighters, an example of this can be found with private ambulance services which can, and often do, replace firefighter personnel to respond to medical emergencies. This solution can save municipalities millions of dollars, and can make economic sense without compromising the quality of service.

With respect to law enforcement, an example can be found in Newport Beach, where the issue is whether or not their harbor patrol requires deputy sheriffs, or if those services can be more efficiently performed by local law enforcement and city harbor patrol personnel. The financial impact of this choice is significant.

Using data available on Transparent California, according to analysis performed by local residents who know the names of the deployed personnel and could look each of them up individually, Harbor Patrol Officers and Harbor service workers earned, on average, total compensation in 2018 of $61,176. Even the park rangers employed by Newport Beach, which have “limited peace officer” status (including the power to make arrests) only averaged $84,740 in total compensation. This figure includes everything, base salary, overtime pay, current benefits and the employer’s pension payment.

By contrast, the same analysis showed the average total compensation of Orange County Harbor Patrol Officers assigned to Newport Harbor in 2018 was $291,571. Despite this amazing disparity in compensation, there is a strong case that the services of these Orange County Sheriffs are not required in Newport Harbor.

These figures are clearly debatable. Because most of California’s cities and counties (including Orange County) no longer include in their reports to Transparent California (or to the State Controller) a per employee cost of paying down their unfunded liability, Transparent California adds in their own estimate of that cost. In the case of Orange County, the unfunded liability is now $5.4 billion. Since continuing to fund and pay pensions depends on covering that liability, it’s hard to argue it doesn’t constitute part of total compensation. Also not added in these reports is the present value of the eventual cost for retiree health benefits.

Despite the particulars of this case, however, these personnel policies deserve urgent debate. Should sheriff deputies perform routine inspections and write up minor infractions? Should firefighters respond to medical emergencies? Why, when qualified specialists, often from private firms, can do this work just as well for less money?

Proponents of replacing county sheriffs with local employees make the following arguments. First, as documented by Frank Kim, the Executive Officer of Orange County, in a memorandum to the Board of Supervisors in August, 2018, only 3 percent of “hours spent in response to calls” in Newport Harbor were for criminal activities.” This means that 97 percent of the calls could have been handled by harbor service workers or limited peace officers employed by the City of Newport Beach at far less cost.

Another objection to replacing county sheriffs with local services is that the sheriffs “handle issues in the harbor, outside the harbor, and homeland security,” which supposedly means “the taxpayer is getting a bargain.” But in reality the Coast Guard, which berths a Coast Guard Cutter in Newport Harbor, is responsible for homeland security inside and outside the harbor.

As for other issues that may arise outside the harbor, such as assists for broken down vessels and sea tows, there are third party private companies that can (and do) handle calls for services outside the harbor. Moreover, the City of Newport Beach keeps three rescue boats outside the harbor during peak hours to handle any immediate shoreline calls.

Finally, there remains those 3 percent of calls that are for criminal activities, and clearly some of these criminal activities will involve situations that rangers with “limited peace officer” status will not be trained and equipped to handle. But the City of Newport Beach, at all times, has police officers stationed around the perimeter of the harbor. When very serious law enforcement issues arise, the City Harbor Patrol can simply pick up one or more of these police officers from the nearest dock to assist.

One barrier to pursuing more cost effective solutions to harbor services in Newport Beach is the fact that the Harbor Patrol Budget is funded by Orange County Parks, and is not part of the annual $700 million Orange County Sheriff’s budget. This takes away some of the incentive for the Sheriff’s agency to support more cost effective solutions. It is therefore up to the Orange County Supervisors to determine whether or not they can restore millions to their park budget by directing it to reimburse the City of Newport Beach for harbor security instead of continuing to pay the sheriff’s department for more expensive services.

One may have a civil debate over public safety compensation. There is a strong case to be made that police and sheriffs are not overpaid, since in California they face ongoing challenges to recruit new officers. If their pensions were reduced to a financially sustainable level, more police and sheriffs could be hired, and their base pay might even be increased without breaking municipal budgets. Hiring more officers would also reduce overtime expenses. But part of restoring financial health to California’s cities and counties requires making smart personnel decisions.

Hopefully California’s public sector unions – especially those which have not disgraced their professions – will begin to support letting go of some work assignments, when letting go makes financial and operational good sense.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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How Wall Street Bought the Public Employee Unions

Earlier this week, on December 7th, 2011, as reported by the San Jose Mercury, the “San Jose City Council votes 6-5 to place pension reform on June ballot.”

This plan is drawing fierce resistance, but there are two financial considerations that most critics of pension reform don’t take sufficiently into account when making their arguments:

(1) Pension contributions are very sensitive to how much the fund can earn. A pension that earns 3% per year, i.e., allows someone who works for 30 years to retire with a pension equivalent to 90% of their final salary, will require a 10% increase in annual required contributions (as a percent of pay) for every 1.0% the earnings on the pension fund drop. That is, if the contribution to a firefighter’s pension is currently 35% per year (based on employer and employee contributions combined), and CalPERS lowers their expected rate of annual return by just 1.0%, from 7.75% to 6.75%, then the required annual contribution as a percent of salary goes up to 45% per year.

(2) The rate of return being currently maintained by most pension funds, 7.75% per year, is much higher than can be sustained going forward. A key reason for this is because equity growth over the past 20-30 years, and especially over the last 10-15 years, was fueled by increasing debt. By enabling massive borrowing – consumer, commercial and government – more consumer spending was in-turn enabled, which increased corporate profits which increased equity values. Now global debt has reached its maximum, we are going to deal with slower growth and hence lower rates of return for pension funds. The other key reason for the inevitability of lower pension fund returns is demographic. With baby-boomers now beginning to retire, and with public sector workers now retiring with these far more generous pension plans (they were only raised about 10 years ago), there are more people selling equities than ever before in order to finance retirements. Equity values are a function of supply and demand, and public sector pensions are going to be doing a lot more selling to finance pension payouts than ever before. The chances that the major pension funds in the United States can continue to earn 7.75% year after year are virtually zero.

Pension reforms such as San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s proposal should be supported.

The San Jose proposal may actually do enough to restore financial solvency to a public employee pension plan. Eventually raising the employee’s withholding to as much as 25% of their pay begins to contribute enough money to fund these plans, especially when combined with accruing benefits at no more than 2.0% per year, and deferring retirement to age 57 or higher.

Here are a few questions and answers about public sector pensions:

QUESTION: Aren’t pension critics, or “reformers,” if you will, trying to ignore the contractual commitments they made as taxpayers, simply because they become more costly than originally expected?

ANSWER:
Nobody “agreed” to these contracts as they have turned out. When pension upgrades were sold to politicians by Wall Street lobbyists they were represented as being nearly free to taxpayers because market based returns would cover the costs. Politicians didn’t understand the financial risks and voters were never told about it. To be fair, even the union leadership had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Let’s put it this way – if somebody sold you a car, and said the payments would be $250 per month, then five years later said the payments would be raised to $1,000 per month, then five years after that said the payments would be raised to $2,500 per month, would anyone “like” that? And how would the holder of the loan appear – when they say “a deal is a deal” and try to force you to pay up?

In any event, opponents of pension reform should review the two financial points made earlier, because bankruptcy will void these contracts, and bankruptcy is staring every city and county in California in the face.

QUESTION: Everyone agrees that some kind of public pension reform is unavoidable, and that is exactly what is underway now. But can people who want to change public sector pension benefits legitimately claim that Chapter 9 is a magic bullet that will suddenly relieve everyone of the legal obligations that have been made on their behalf by their elected representatives?

Now that the bill for pension obligations is coming due, wouldn’t reneging on these obligations constitute theft?

ANSWER: “Theft” is how public sector unions have stolen our democracy and “negotiated” these unsustainable pensions with politicians they elected. Public sector pensions, on average, are five to ten times better than social security. The arcane and onerous details of pension obligations were buried in the fine print of these “contracts.” To imply that taxpayers are somehow the thieves for wanting to reduce pension costs down to the levels they were originally ignores the sheer scale and generousity of these financially unsustainable pensions. The 2010 annual reports from CalPERS and CalSTRS document that the average pension for a newly retired government worker in California after 30 years of work is nearly $70,000 per year. If every Californian over the age of 55 received that much in retirement it would cost $700 billion per year, nearly 40% of the entire GDP of the state! It’s impossible. It can’t go on. It is oppression and a recipe for economic ruin.

The bottom line is this – public sector unions and Wall Street are now in bed together, betting trillions of dollars in the markets with their pension funds, trying to eke over-market returns through aggressive fund management, with the taxpayers forced to pay up when they can’t hit their numbers.

From the CalSTRS Annual Report, page 135:

CalSTRS participants who retired during the 12 months ending June 30th, 2010 (the most recent data), earned pensions as follows:
25-30 years service, average pension $50,772 per year.
30-35 years service, average pension $67,980 per year.
35-40 years service, average pension $86,736 per year.

From the CalPERS Annual Report, page 151:

CalPERS participants who retired during the 12 months ending December 31st, 2009 (the most recent data), earned pensions as follows:
25-30 years service, average pension $53,182 per year.
30+ years service, average pension $66,828 per year.

QUESTION: Isn’t it true that the longer someone works in any pension system, the higher their eventual benefit is likely to be? Doesn’t it work that way with Social Security, up to the cap?

ANSWER: The social security cap is about $31K per year after 40+ years of full time work, which equates to well less than 20% of the payee’s annual income. There is no cap on public sector pension payments, which are averaging nearly $70K per year, and they are averaging over 66% of the payee’s annual income, after only 30+ years of work.

Nearly everyone in America was purchasing more than they could afford during the internet/housing bubbles, but lobbyists hired by public sector unions, alongside lobbyists hired by Wall Street, are trying to make our politicians enshrine the pension liabilities – sold by Wall Street lobbyists to union-backed politicians – permanently into our tax code. And together, Wall Street and public sector unions have made public sector agencies collection agents for Wall Street. Wall Street hedge funds now bypass brokerages to manipulate market liquidity and asset values, and public sector pension funds are the biggest players on Wall Street. This is a corrupt system and cannot be fixed until taxpayer backed pension funds that can extract by “contract” 7.75% returns – either from investment returns or from taxpayers – are dissolved. And why shouldn’t public sector pension funds be the biggest players on Wall Street? Not only do they control about $4.0 trillion in assets, but they have the full backing of the public sector unions, the politicians they control throughout America’s states, cities and counties, and the taxpayers as the final guarantors.

Public sector pension funds and the social security fund should be all merged into a single fund, and the combined assets should be systematically moved into either cash or treasury bills, eliminating the speculators, eliminating most of the expensive financial bureaucrats of all stripes, and getting the government and Wall Street out of the business of fleecing taxpayers. And one, uniform and financially sustainable retirement incentive formula would be offered to ALL retired American workers, public or private.

For much more on the benefits and the feasibility of merging all public employee pension funds with social security, read “Merge Social Security and Public Pension Funds.”

The Price of Public Safety

There is nothing wrong with paying a premium to public safety personnel because of the risks they take. And while it is true there are other career choices that are riskier than public safety jobs, and while it is also true that on average, public safety personnel in California – according to CalPERS own actuarial data – have life expectancies that are virtually the same as the rest of us, it is still appropriate to pay public safety personnel a premium. After all, we never know when these people may stand on the front lines when something extraordinary happens – such as what occurred in New York City on Sept. 11th, 2001. People who work in public safety live with this knowledge every day, and they should be compensated appropriately for that.

The question is how much of a premium is appropriate, and how much of a premium can we afford as a society? Should a fire fighter make more than a medical doctor? Should a police officer make more than an engineer?

In order to get an idea of what public safety employees in California actually make, I obtained a roster that showed the total compensation paid to each employee of a Southern California city. Out of respect for the employees noted on this roster, I won’t identify the city, much less reveal the names of these individuals. And it is fair to state this city probably has a median income somewhat higher than the average for California. It would certainly be interesting as follow-up to obtain this sort of information for other California cities. But even taking all of these factors into consideration, the amounts these folks are making is startling – particularly when you adjust for realistic current year funding obligations for future retirement health and pension benefits.

In our example city, using actual data, the fire department has about 100 full time positions. The average annual compensation for these firefighters, if you include current benefits and current funding for future benefits, is $179K per year. But it doesn’t end there, because the pension funding percentage is calculated at 34% of earnings. As argued in “Maintaining Pension Solvency,” if you calculate pension funding requirements for a safety employee in California based on after-inflation returns of 3.0% instead of CalPERS official rate of 4.75%, you need to increase the pension withholding as a percent of payroll by 20%! Making this adjustment yields an average firefighter compensation of $202K per year. And even this figure probably fails to adequately account for current funding requirements for future supplemental retirement health benefits.

For our example city’s police department, using actual data, the police department has about 150 full time positions. The average annual compensation for these police officers, if you include current benefits and current funding for future benefits, is $174K per year. If you increase the pension withholding percentage by 20%, in order to reflect realistic rates of future pension fund returns, you will calculate an average police officer compensation of $197K per year – again, probably not including enough to fund future supplemental retirement health benefits.

It is important to emphasize these amounts – roughly $200K per year each – are not for senior management, or even senior employees. This is the average, taking into account entry level public safety employees as well as senior public safety employees.

It is interesting to note what the rest of the employees, the non-safety personnel, make in our sample city – making the same adjustments, their total compensation averages $118K per year. That is still quite a bit, considering many of these jobs are relatively unskilled. To put this in perspective, the average private sector worker in California averages $40K per year in compensation – one third what the non-safety workers average in our sample city.

Should a non-safety local public employee workforce, one including a large percentage of relatively unskilled positions, have an average compensation per employee of $118K per year? Should safety employees make, on average, $200K per year? Can we afford this?

What is clear over the past several years is that as pay stagnated in the private sector, public sector employees continued to receive regular cost-of-living increases. Over the past 10-15 years, public employees also received dramatic increases to their retirement benefits. And as housing prices soared, millions of Californians borrowed against their home equity, and many of them are now paying dearly for that mistake. There are undoubtedly many public sector employees who were caught up in the borrowing frenzy, and are now on the edge financially – but it is fair to wonder why they should be immune from the same cutbacks that have left so many people in the private sector unemployed, or under-employed, or compensated at rates that are a fraction of what they were during the bubble booms.

It is also fair to wonder why public sector employees should not be obligated to plan and prepare and save, if they want a comfortable retirement. For non-safety personnel in public service, it is fair to wonder – since they now make more, not less, than private sector workers for similar work requiring similar skills – why in their retirement they shouldn’t simply collect social security and medicare like the rest of us. And even if public safety employees should collect something better than social security in recognition of their role as first responders, it is fair to wonder why their retirement pensions should be literally five times more than the social security payments due retired private sector workers with similar salary histories. As documented in “Funding Social Security vs. Public Sector Pensions,” the fiscal crisis facing social security is trivial and easily solved, whereas the fiscal crisis facing public sector pensions is catastrophic and can only be solved either through massive benefit cuts or crippling new taxes.

It is difficult to dispute the contention that the price of public safety cannot be too high. It is difficult to overstate the appreciation anyone should feel for people who stand between us and chaos – the people who protect us, the people who rescue us, the people who save our property. But those people themselves should understand the price we’re currently paying is elevated because of collective bargaining and overwhelming political clout, and is dangerously out of touch with market realities. It would be helpful for everyone to consider the choices involved – cuts to pay and benefits vs. cuts to services, cuts to pay and benefits vs. crippling taxes and economic decline, cuts to pay and benefits vs. investments to advance our technology, our infrastructure, and our military security. All of these elements must be balanced, yet are currently grossly out of balance, because in one way or another, all of them may quite legitimately be described as issues of safety and security for California and the nation.