Cities and counties, weighed down by ever-mounting retirement costs, are barely keeping their heads above water. Now the state Legislature is considering an onerous bill that would ensure many of them drown.
Assembly Bill 1250, introduced by Assemblyman Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, would effectively prohibit most local governments from contracting out for key services. It’s a union-driven bid to force the hiring of more public employees, complete with their unaffordably high benefit costs.
Never mind that local governments are struggling to meet current obligations, or that public employee pension benefits have already saddled taxpayers in California with at least $374 billion of debt.
California’s public employee unions want more bloated government. They don’t care who has to pay for it. And they finance the campaigns of enough state legislators that they might succeed — unless taxpayers speak up.
Their self-serving bill would affect local governments that operate under general state laws rather than their own charters.
That includes 44 of the state’s 58 counties — such as Imperial, Kern, Riverside, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura (Los Angeles Orange, San Bernardino and San Diego are charter counties) — and 361 of the 482 cities, including Fontana, Garden Grove, Moreno Valley, Oxnard, Rancho Cucamonga and Santa Clarita, but not charter cities like Anaheim, Irvine, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Ana.
Labor’s brazen strategy is to make the price of contracting for services so difficult and costly that local governments have no alternative but to hire more workers or not provide essential services.
We’re talking about contracts for everything from engineering and legal services to garbage collection and financial advice. If a local government contracts with outside firms, it would become much more difficult and costly.
The bill mandates that the contracts save money — but then prohibits contracts that displace government workers or save money on compensation.
For years now, unions have claimed they’re entitled to rich pensions and other benefits because they are otherwise underpaid. Now they’re fearful that a private firm might undercut unaffordable public sector compensation packages, or provide services more efficiently.
Jones-Sawyer and Service Employees International Union, the sponsor of the bill, propose a labyrinth of disclosure rules and vague auditing and performance standards designed to drive up the cost and complexity of contracting for services.
To further discourage local governments, the bill would make them liable for the contracting firms’ labor violations. Contracting for services would become a legal quagmire for local governments.
Local government leaders should be free to find the best services for the best price. And they shouldn’t have to hire government workers for projects that are temporary or services best provided by the private sector.
Just as state lawmakers want the Trump administration to stop meddling in their affairs, they should leave local governments to run theirs.