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Costa Mesa Lays off Half to Pay Pensions
Nearly half the city workers in Costa Mesa received layoff notices last week. Street sweepers. Firefighters. Mechanics. Payroll clerks. Animal control workers. In all, about 210 of the city's 472 employees, many of whom have worked there for decades. On Thursday, as the notices were being handed out, one maintenance worker committed suicide by jumping from the city hall roof. Did his suicide note blame the City, or his ex-wife? The cutbacks are necessary because the escalating costs of providing pensions for unionized employees are draining the city's revenue, city leaders say. Within three years, city projections show, more than one of every five tax dollars will be spent on employees' retirement benefits. Sounds like a drain, to me! Republican efforts to roll back public employee benefits and bargaining rights has triggered mass protests in places such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. But in Costa Mesa, where conservatives dominate city politics, the offensive against public worker compensation has gone further. WaPo. Do they seem to take sides? Clearly, the mayor should work for free, and the taxpayers just pay up, and quit whining. Balance the budget, Trunks, but don't cut anything! Between 1998 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available, total pension payments by state and local governments rose twice as fast as their payrolls, according to census figures. Already, some politicians ideologically opposed to public employee unions "What angers a lot of us is that we're being blamed for the economic situation," said Jason Pyle, 38, a fire department captain who earned $160,000 in base, overtime and certification pay in 2010, according to city records. It's California, so that's about the same as $40,000 in Iowa. Isn't it? Pyle, who has been with the department for 14 years, could retire at age 54 with 90 percent of his pay. Not defending that - it's his right, you know - Jason reduces the argument to the absurd: "They're marginalizing what we actually do -- like everything I've done in my life now has no meaning." That's right, Jason. You're useless; a waste of skin. He called the city's approach to the problem -- the layoff notices -- "a scorched-earth policy." Yep. I'd like to see more of it. When the unions give something back, they can save the jobs of their fellows without breaking the backs of the taxpayers. Tough to be a pawn in this game. Posted by: Bobby 2011-03-20 |
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