Pity David Twa as he tries to talk sense into the Contra Costa Supervisors about county finances. Anyone who can read a balance sheet should take note that, along with expiration of federal mortgage refinance programs and unemployment insurance, future real estate and associated business tax revenues from tanking commercial real estate looms large over future county budgets.
But where are the cuts and massive outsourcing that will need to take place to get the county budget even within shouting distance of where it will need to be in 2010 and 2011? Not filling a position when someone retires and other budgeting by a thousand cuts (whoop-tee-doo) is not the kind of leadership Contra Costa County needs today.
Every decision the Board of Supervisors makes is based on which solution will least impact the public employee unions, instead of reflecting any serious fiduciary responsibility to its constitutional duties to taxpayers and civil society.
The problem David Twa and the taxpayers of Contra Costa County face is the sickly skewed, out-of-proportion influence that public employee unions have over the careers of county supervisors, especially thems that want to enhance their pay grade and standing in the bloated regional pecking order dominated by unions and area businesses that are hogtied by union labor and associated regulations—think Contra Costa Council.
The open secret is the influence, especially of public employee union interests has become so undemocratic and self-serving that union leadership and members—as well as most county and other electeds that serve them—practically disregard the larger commonwealth; something unions and local leaders used to care about, but no longer. In contrast, Job #1 of administration of County Government ought not begin and end simply with favorable contracts and gold-plated health and retirement benefits only for firemen, teachers, and county clerks tracking federal entitlement dollars.
Yet, recent contracts indicate Supervisor Susan Bonilla (D-IV) obviously counts on the help of firefighter and other public employee unions to ease her career upgrade to take Tom Torlakson’s seat in 2010. In fact, Karen Mitchoff, and others already jockeying to take Bonilla’s seat in 2010, brag openly about how they worked for union thralls like State Senator Mark DeSaulnier, or cough up other union friendly bona fides as crass code to mean “business as usual” in a cynical game of pay-to-play on the tax payers’ dime.
The influence of public-employee unions now presents a real threat to American democracy and the fiscal well being of our institutions, and must be corrected by the voters themselves as the current gang of electeds have forgotten who they serve.
John Steele Gordon wrote recently, public employee unions “work hard to fire politicians who don’t knuckle under, using their immense financial and manpower resources to elect others they thought would do their bidding. As a result, many politicians forget whose interests they are paid to uphold.”
Here’s the litmus test, “The stronger the public-employee unions, the worse shape governments tend to be in…”
As the doctor says…”Cough.”