San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

I support that kind of proposition if we get non tax paying children out of our schools. This kind of fraud is extremely costly to all Callifornia taxpayers. These children live in Mexico with their parents and pay no taxes, yet use our public schools for free. No these are not illegal aliens or children of illegals. These are Mexican nationals who register their children using their relative's address to establish residency. Welfare should be eliminated for all except for severely disabled. Public employees are not to blame for the entire budget crisis. Yes, some of their retirements are ridiculous, especially when you look at CHP commissioners who develop a disability their last year in office and retire tax free for life! The public employees are not the only ones feeding at the trough. There is plenty of blame to spread around.

Aecetia, I don't see how the legals/illegals have anything to do with the state budget.

The state has only x amount of money and can only spend x amount. The classrooms will be bigger if we cut school budgets.

The government's budget needs to be cut to bring it back into balance first.

The other social issues come later.

Because schools are largely funded based on enrollment and attendance numbers.

As a liberal, I hate to say it, but government workers just need to work harder and take on higher work loads, at lower pay, just to keep their jobs.

That's how it works in the private sector. The same principle should apply to the public sector.

If they don't like it, they're welcomed to seek employment elsewhere. Nobody is stopping them.

BTW, I'm a social liberal but not a public employees union supporter.

State Employee's Unions have such a grip on state government that I believe there is little hope for reform.

There may be one ray of hope: If California is declared bankrupt that might break the backs of the State Employee Unions; which in the long run will be best for the state.

Yes Paramount, then all the jobs that were being done by those crook gardeners, sewage public works guys who make those big pay checks (30-50 a year maybe?) can lose their jobs and we can fill them with cheaper labor. who would that be??? hmmm! no private companies wouldn't use illegal help to lower their cost, would they? Really sick of people scapegoating public workers (I know a few) who do not make these wonderfull paydays that get reported. They are hard workers and their pay is lower then private sector always (for that kook who said they are higher then private jobs, please!) Most public workers are doing things most people would never do (try cleaning up a sewer break at 5 in the morning). Everyone looks at the managment of public workers and what they make but they are not the norm (even then they are still making 10-100 times less than managers in the private sector). So ease up

some examples: found most private jobs on Monster in California (since we were talking about CA workers) The Public jobs are from San Diego City.

Water Systems Technician I $2,553 - 3,035 /mo
Couldn’t find a private equivalent

Public Accountant I: $3,719 - 4,520 /mo (44,628- 54,240)
Private Accountant: most starting at 55-65,000 a year

Public Junior Engineer-Civil $4,181 - 5,063 /mo (50- 60,000)
Private Civil : found some at 65,000 and up a year

Solid Waste Inspector: $3,564 - 4,289 /mo
Private Plumber: a crap load more than that.

Police Records Data Specialist $2,682 - 3,247 /mo (32-39,000)
Private Record’s Management: 42-60,000 a year

Fire Helicopter Pilot $5,934 - 7,183 /mo (71-86,000 a year)
Private Helo Pilot: 80-125,000 a year starting

Did you know that real per capita CA government spending is lower today than it was ten years ago?

In other words, public employee wages are growing slower than inflation.

PlnrBoy, if public employees are so qualified as you say, they can easily find alternative employment in the private sector. Nobody is stopping them. I wish them the best.

It's not a question of what we should pay but what we can afford to pay public employees. It's not just how much we pay public employees, but how many we should employ.

I'd love to have a maid to clean my apartment. But if I can't afford one, then it's either I clean myself or learn to live in a dirty place.

For example, we now have trash pickup once a week in San Diego. But if we can't afford that, perhaps we need to learn to live with pickup once every 10 days. Or we need to lower the cost of the weekly service by outsourcing to the lowest bidder.

If voters are unwilling to pay more in taxes (I'm one of them) then the government needs to cut back. That's pretty simple in my opinion.

I think I have a better idea.

Just pass a ballot proposition that limits the increase in state spending each year to the following formula:

CPI + (Estimated) Population Change (%)

It's not perfect, but it would essentially keep state spending per capita constant in real dollars (roughly, that is). Had we done this a decade ago, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Edit: In addition, the nice thing is that this would allow the state to spend more in years when the economy sucks (that is, run deficits) because surpluses would build during the good years. In other words, it would allow for fiscal flexibility when needed, while not allowing such "flexibility" to grow ad infinitum.

Right now they obviously can't find alternative employment, there isn't any. But sooner or later the economy will recover. When that happens, qualified public employees will jump ship and new positions will be hard to fill. We can close the budget in the short run, but that model of development would be unsustainable.

In the end, we should decide what we want to have and decide how we want to pay. Do we want to keep the honor of having one of the lowest effective property taxes in the nation, or do we want to start spending more on K-12 per pupil than Iowa? Do we want to imitate Texas by cutting welfare spending, if it means, say, a 50% higher crime rate?

PlnrBoy: It's not accurate to just look at ones paycheck for compensation, you really have to consider a workers total compensation - pay, benefits, retirement, etc...

on the good side, this would lower real estate prices, right?

Brian-
Here is the impact of the non residents on the State budget: taken from an article in the Sunday's San Diego Union "even a modest "10% false registration rate, ... would be 4,200 students at a $10,800 average cost per student, or more than $45 million per year."

They are not illegals. They live in Mexico and get driven up here to attend school for free. It all adds up and costs the California tax payers, causes increases in work load for teachers and increased class size, etc. It is a problem because the school officials refuse to enforce residence requirements. More waste, fraud and abuse.

Perhaps I'm not understanding your position correctly. Do you think that illegal immigration does not affect the state's budget? The #1 public expense in the state of california is education. When I worked in education more than a decade ago, we had estimates that 40% of the public school population consisted of illegal immigrants or children of illegal immigrants. They were not allowed to officially count or consider residency because of the potential for political backlash.

The prison system is also one of the biggest expenditures for the state. Again, I've seen estimates that show 40-50% of the prison population consists of illegal immigrants.

Add to these expenses the additional burdens on infrastructure, and you're talking about big numbers.

Want to eliminate a huge chunk of the state's employees? Fix the illegal immigration problem, and the schools, prisons, etc. will have to cut staff. Voila! The budget is fixed!

I am glad to hear that people are not making it out that most public workers are rich off the people. Yes cut spending, cut jobs, but saying that public workers are living fat off the wallet of the people can not be. I agree with Paramount, most, if not all public servant don't work for the money, it is the benefits, schedules, etc that compensates them instead of the money. It is the only way to find able bodied workers. Now when people talk about managment of city's/state's, i believe the first place to start cutting is there. Most principles at schools do what??? Fire battalion captians? Police chiefs? These people should be paid but more like the private sector, with 401's not union backed 3% at 60 formulas made for the lower paid workers. If people want to cut waste look at managment of the state/cities.

It's hard to convince public workers to take a pay cut when the official line is recovery and back to normal soon.

Kind of hamstrung by our own bullshit

It will become a problem in the near future

You make a good point about the prison system and illegal immigrants.

But would you rather deport the criminals back to their home countries or do you want them to serve time for their crimes?

The illegal immigrant situation will not be solved easily.

In the immediate term, however, state and local governments' budgets are limited. They need to cut staff, benefits and services in order to balance their budgets notwithstanding the issues with illegal immigration.

It won't be pleasant and people won't be happy but it's got to be done. We can only spend what we can afford.

I think that it's a great idea.

It is not that simple. You would need to include intangibles like job stability and tangibles (medical, retirement plan, vacation days, sick days, paid training, etc)

Very few private companies will keep you on payroll for 30 years and then give you 90% of your highest salary for the rest of the life while taking 0% contribution.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/photos/20...

There are some nice jobs on the private side, but they often come with very low job stability and require specific advanced skills that take time and money to acquire and can become obsolete in few years.

I am shocked this thread didnt become as explosive as earlier threads did. I read through last night and said to myself "read this one tomorrow, itll be crazy!". Stangly enough, it wasnt. Pat on the back to the piggs.

Aecetia I totally get where you are coming from. I read an article about this in Imperial County and I was just flabbergasted. It is basically an eduaction subsidy to Mexico. Parents work, pay taxes, and vote in Mexico, but send their kids to school in California. They just walk across the border. I think the reason most people missed what you are saying is that this only happens in Southern San Diego and Imperial Counties. Everywhere else is just too far away to make it work. Illegal immigration is a totally different problem.

As for public employees pay, and cutting it. Eh, the vast majority of public employees dont get rich on their pay. The difference is the benifits and the job security. Id rather vote on a requirment that

1) All officers (ie Lt's and Captns and district superviors etc) be considered management and not elegable for pensions and the "front line" benifits. They can keep what they have, but no more. These guys are paper pushers now, not front line personal. I have a feeling the increadable growth/demand in costs would slow when managment, ie those overseeing the money, dont also get to partake.

2) All pension/benifit/wage costs must be fully paid for each year and all contracts come up for negotiation every 2-4 years exactly 2 months before November elections. No deferring costs to the future. Lets see how many boards of supervisors wanna agree to increases when they gotta turn around and face the voters with tax increases.

Re:
Just pass a ballot proposition that limits the increase in state spending each year to the following formula:

CPI + (Estimated) Population Change (%)

It's not perfect, but it would essentially keep state spending per capita constant in real dollars (roughly, that is). Had we done this a decade ago, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Washington voted on a similar proposition yesterday, and the vote tally so far has it failing. The difference in WA was that it would limit state revenue growth rather than spending growth (to CPI+population). Any revenue above that would have been used to lower property taxes. The interesting thing is that it appears to have failed even in the conservative counties east of the Cascades.

For what it's worth, public employees in my profession and experience level make about 40% more than their private sector counterparts in raw salary; I'm not even counting the extra benefits like retirement pay. I'd vote for something along the lines of public salary=private salary*frac, where frac could be negotiated by profession but ideally around 0.8 to account for the retirement perks.

The cost of pensions where much the pain lies. Pensions are too generous, too expensive, and too poorly managed.

CA promised too much, then sent all the pension money down the shitter with dumb-ass investments. Now, they have to dump more money into the pension system to keep the promise, which was too much to promise in the first place.

Bankrupcy is the only way out.

Even I agree that the pensions are too generous, and need to be brought back to 2% @ 55: 2% of an employee's highest base pay, which does NOT include overtime, multiplied by the number of years worked, and they can retire at 55.

Remember that these pensions were granted when the pension funds were fully funded (were "technically" over-funded), during the stock market bubble in the late 90s.

The pensions are full of wall street promises.

What do you do and how do I get to do it too?

I agree with DWCAP fully. 1. How do I get the job where public is paying in any aspect hirer than the private sector. 2. Bring "public managment" figures into reality and make them pay into there pensions. They are making the big bucks (still nowhere near the private sector) pension benefits should be for the front line guys who do the work and do not make a king's ransom. You would have to sell it to the top dogs, but might be easier to do if the majority understand it might save their pension. I think a guy that sweeps your streets for 30,000 a year for 30 years deserves 3% or 2% at 60, since most are not going to get SS.

I was referring to civil engineering (water resources). At my level private pay is around 75-80k, while at LADWP you rarely see engineers making less than six figures. It's very difficult to get a job there if you already have experience; most are hired as college grads and just never leave.