Union In The News – Weekly Highlights

By Sean O’Striker

04/26/2016

$15 Minimum Wage Sends California Businesses Fleeing By Connor D. Wolf, April 26, 2016, Daily Caller California businesses are already starting to move out of state less than a month after lawmakers raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to reports Monday. California beat New York by a couple hours April 4 to become...

The Bell Syndrome Afflicts More Cities Than Just Bell

By Edward Ring

04/26/2016

Remember Bell, California? Back in 2010 the Los Angeles Times reported that Bell city officials were receiving unusually large salaries, perhaps the highest in the United States. For example, Robert Rizzo, the City manager, had received $787,637. By September of that year, as reported on CNN, the California Attorney General filed charges against eight former and current city officials....

TAGS: John Moore, unfunded pension liability

Let’s Deep-six Prop. 30

By Larry Sand

04/26/2016

The signatures for an initiative that would extend 2012’s “temporary” tax increase in California are due today. Four years ago Californians voted in Prop. 30, a “temporary” tax, to pay back schools “from the years of devastating cuts.” But as I show here, there was hardly any devastation; in fact, our spending had continued to...

TAGS: Andrew Coulson, Ben DeGrow, California Teachers Association, Cato Institute, EdSource, education spending, Eric Heins, Jason Bedrick, John Fensterwald, Larry Sand, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, pension tsunami, Prop. 30, Randi Weingarten, teachers union

Transparency organization wins 'total victory' in Lynwood records case

By California Policy Center

04/25/2016

For Immediate Release April 26, 2016 California Policy Center Contact: Will Swaim Will@CalPolicyCenter.org (949) 274-1911 SACRAMENTO – The city of Lynwood will pay $22,000, part of a judge’s decision that city officials failed to disclose to the California Policy Center the names and salaries of Lynwood public employees. You can read the April 22 judgment here....

TAGS: California Public Records Act, Edward Ring

The Pension Scandals in Sonoma and Marin Counties

By John Moore

04/21/2016

Two Case Studies on How Two Counties Purchased Outside Legal Opinions That Delivered Aggressively Self-Serving Interpretations of the Law in Response to Grand Jury Reports That Found That Substantial Pension Benefits had Been Granted Illegally. Introduction In California, public pensions are guided by different divisions of the government code. The largest administrator is CalPERS which administers...

TAGS: unfunded pension liabilities

Stanton officials launch propaganda war on tax-repeal effort

By Will Swaim

04/21/2016

Downtown Stanton, 1913: More innocent times. STANTON, Calif. – It was a Wednesday afternoon in early March, a more innocent time in Stanton, California. Gathered in the community center of the Plaza Pine Estates, we were like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they ate the apple that gave them a second-grader’s...

TAGS: bonds, debt, pensions, Stanton

Stanton is Your Kind of Town

By Will Swaim

04/21/2016

Kobe lives here – the NBA star, not the beef, though that’s often what’s starring for dinner. And Gwen Stefani grew up here. Orange County has the NHL Ducks and baseball’s weirdly named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Television has honored this place (and mocked it) with Arrested Development, Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,...

Local Citizen Takes Marin County to Court Over Pensions

By Sean O’Striker

04/20/2016

Marin County is not the only county in California where pension benefits were increased, retroactively, back when the increased cost was seemed to be easily covered by double-digit returns on pension fund investments. But Marin County is the only county, at least right now, where a private citizen is taking the county Board of Supervisors to court over...

Average Orange County Firefighter Made $236,155 in 2014

By Edward Ring

04/20/2016

The City of Stanton contracts with Orange County for public safety services. Like many cities in Orange County, and in an arrangement that is typical of many small cities in California, it makes financial sense for the city to pay the county in exchange for an allocation of police and firefighters who protect the citizens...

TAGS: Orange County Firefighter

'Outsiders': The powerful government unions that brought OC's highest sales tax to Stanton are at it again

By Will Swaim

04/20/2016

Stanton city officials have taken to the streets to fight a November ballot measure that would repeal the city’s one-year-old sales tax. In 37 community meetings and in a stream of communications from City Hall, officials tell residents the tax is essential to the city’s survival – and that its victory at the polls in...

TAGS: Orange County Firefighter, Stanton

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