The reality of the compensation situation
09/22/2011
Meryl Wamhoff’s letter lambasting reporter Shane Cohn for his perspective on government and taxes (“Just another liberal reporter…,” Letters, Sept. 1) certainly brought a provocative viewpoint to your pages. Unfortunately, Wamhoff was inaccurate in the claims he made about the city of Ventura. (“Tale of two taxes,” News, 8/11)
First, Wamhoff claims the taxpayers in Ventura will be footing part of the bill for the outrageous pensions of two top city of Bell employees, each of whom worked in Ventura early in their careers. This is not true, partly because of a proactive approach by the city of Ventura.
Ventura, along with other cities the pair subsequently worked for, supported a bill in the Legislature — almost certain to be signed by the governor in the next few weeks — that will force Bell, not Ventura or other cities, to foot the bill for their inflated pensions.
As it turns out, CalPERS, the state retirement agency, has already taken action to slash the pensions that were estimated in early press accounts. Instead of getting $411,000 a year, former Bell Police Chief Randy Adams will receive $268,000 — admitted, still a huge number but far less than it otherwise would be. Former Bell Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who worked for Ventura in the 1980s, had her pension reduced from an estimated $250,000 per year to $43,000 per year.
Secondly, Wamhoff asserts that Ventura “overcompensates its public employees.” In fact, however, Ventura’s pay scales are much lower than surrounding jurisdictions, such as the cities of Oxnard and Thousand Oaks and Santa Barbara County. City Manager Rick Cole makes $172,000 a year in base salary, which is about $60,000 less than his counterparts in Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, and $100,000 less than the city manager of Oxnard. City Attorney Ariel Calonne makes about $190,000 a year, which his $30,000-$40,000 less than most of his counterparts around the county. Both recently took a 7 percent pay cut to contribute to their pension costs. So Wamhoff is wrong in asserting that we “never once considered that the compensation packages for these bureaucrats are too generous.” It was the first thing we considered and we acted on it.
This same pay difference is true up and down the organization. I really appreciate the loyalty and dedication of our city employees, but we frequently lose them to Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and Santa Barbara County, all of which pay 10-20 percent more than Ventura does. Over time, this could cause Ventura to become a “farm team” for these other jurisdictions — something that will surely harm our city government’s ability to get the job done, and something I believe no one in Ventura wants.
Wamhoff is right to be concerned about the compensation and retirement obligations of government agencies these days. It is a major concern to all of us in public life. And I understand that if Wamhoff believes the compensation of #all# government employees generally is too high, then he’s likely to think that Ventura pays too much no matter what the pay scale is.
It is wrong, however, to single out Ventura as an example of government’s financial problems, when we have worked much harder than other jurisdictions to be both moderate and fair in our approach to compensation and retirement.
Bill Fulton
Mayor, City of Ventura
Socialism and liberalism are not bad words
A voter might have had many reservations about the failed sales tax hike. But a negative vote because of a slight edge of public employees’ wages over the general population and the unintended consequences to Ventura of the fraud perpetrated on the voters of Bell, hardly measure up. On average, public employees have higher education and training than the general public. And this is Ventura, not Bell. Voting “no” by angry reflex seems more like a tantrum than a thoughtful action.
Wamhoff’s statements (letters, 9/1) that struck the loudest false note, however, were the remarks about liberalism and socialism failing everywhere with examples seen everywhere.
Tea Baggers throw the term “socialism” about with such abandon that one needs to define it carefully, as it now could mean almost anything. By classic definition, as the collective ownership of the means of production, this system had many millennia of success here in the Americas prior to the Europeans’ arrival. What was produced was by hunting, gathering and agriculture, and the land on which this was done was generally held in common by the indigenous tribes, i.e., collectively owned. While destitution might result from unusual conditions, such as warfare, weather or blight, this was the exception. Today, extreme poverty, even need, is normal for the majority of the descendants of the those tribes. Capitalism has not been as kind to them.
What is meant by “liberalism” has also been massaged by the conservatives to a generalized pejorative. In Wamhoff’s case, it appears to represent runaway cronyism and corruption. Yet the greatest level of such in recent times came about under the administration of George W. Bush, who is not generally regarded as a liberal. Think of Halliburton and all that Pentagon waste and fraud. Further, the great outcry we hear in Europe and here about debt and austerity is the indirect result of deregulation, not something liberals generally like.
If one defines liberalism to mean “social democracy” or the “welfare state,” a defanged kind of capitalism, it has been hugely successful for generations, most notably among Scandinavians, who enjoy an enviable standard of living. The deregulation monster hit one of them just prior to our own financial collapse and this bears a closer look.
Iceland was a well-regulated democracy with educated, involved voters, state-run health care in a healthy environment. It had low debt and unemployment.
In 2000, Iceland began deregulation, with disastrous economic consequences. Its three national banks were privatized, and their management showered money on themselves, their friends and anyone they needed to bribe. In five years they had accrued a debt of 120 billion, ten times Iceland’s economy. The subsequent collapse in 2008 tripled unemployment in six months and destroyed the citizens’ savings. In the next election, voters returned the government to the liberal opposition, but the damage was done.
Much the same thing happened here on a larger scale, and because of our size and influence, reverberated globally.
And, of course, the burden of austerity is falling on those who did not cause it and can least afford it.
Margaret McSwine
Ventura
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
Related Articles
Comments
The "burden of austerity" is going to fall on a hell of a lot more people than you envision, Margaret. Socialism is destined to fail. So is capitalism or any other system of allocating the bounty that Earth once so richly provided. Catton repeatedly points out that democracy can only thrive when the entire populace has the necessities of life. When the human population has vastly overshot the carrying capacity of our little planet the reality is soon becoming vastly different. Today Somalia, tomorrow the world. Kiss your comfortable middle-class life style good-bye. Cheers.
The burden will fall on more than us 99%?
Personally I don't carry a brief for either socialism or capitalism. Both have flaws. But right now we have plutocracy and folks like the Kochs decide whether we can even pay attention to the overburdening of the planet with too many humans, the consequences of green house gases, or the great disparity in access to resources here and throughout the world.
You want a softest landing for overshoot? We have to deal with the political power issue first.
Like Candide, I focus on making my garden grow. You focus on talking about it.