Bell Fallout

The recent discovery of the rampant fraud and abuse of the city of Bell has generated a flurry of new thinking and calls, at the state and local levels, for more oversight over county and municipal governments . Hearing the calls for more oversight, both California Attorney General Jerry Brown and Controller John Chiang have launched state-level responses to the Bell corruption scandal. On July 22nd, Attorney General Brown launched an investigation not only into the city of Bell but into all other cities and counties to determine, "whether any illegality, self-dealing, or other improper activity (has) occurred." Controller Chiang ordered that cities and counties begin reporting the salaries of local executives and elected officials to his office. Once received, Controller Chiang plans to create an user-friendly database of all the salaries on his state website for the public.

While this new level of oversight is all well and good, it really is too late for it isn't it? Most local communities are struggling to stay afloat, in part, because of the hefty salaries and benefits of some local officials. Now, I believe that our public servants deserve a living wage in this country but as more and more becomes public, more and more needs to be questioned. 

A few weeks ago, the Burbank Leader came out with a story that one-in-three City of Burbank employees make over $100,000 a year. 1 in 3! While I suppose one could attempt to try to explain the necessity of it all, it doesn't change the long term impacts on the taxpayer. These are salaries that upon retirement often only diminish by only 10-25% (after thirty years of work) upon retirement. This is not a rant against all city employees, as many of the city's employees work hard and earn a respectable wage, however, we as taxpayers have to worry about when the pension bill comes due. With one-third of our city's workforce making over $100k its not long before our city's pension obligations start to take up more and more of the general fund forcing the city to either make cuts, raise fees or both.

Let me be frank, this all is coming up as a result of our economic times. High salaries and benefit packages for elected officials and public employees are often difficult to swallow for the everyday taxpayer who is struggling to stay afloat. Let us not forget public service is about sacrifice. A public employee is not supposed to be paid a salary that is comparable with the private world because at the end of the day, as a good friend says, government doesn't go out of business private companies do. There is a risk involved in the corporate world and it pays for it. We've got to get this on track again or else we are all going to be suffering in the future.