Barry Levinson
There is absolutely no doubt that the biggest financial calamity facing California taxpayers created by our elected officials is the public pension unfunded liabilities followed by the public employee retiree health care unfunded liabilities.
Yet I have been making the point for some time now that as citizens we can’t ignore all the other falsehoods, misinformation and out and out lies given to us by our California elected and appointed officials at all levels of the government and expect to make real headway with pensions.
Why do I say this? It is rather simple really. How do you expect to get an honest handle on pension costs, when we allow our elected and appointed officials to mislead us on just about every important issue facing us today. You want objectivity, transparency, and honesty concerning pensions while letting our officials literally skate on almost everything else. Either we hold all of them accountable and that means they start being honest with us on everything or we throw all of them out and get elected officials who finally have our interests at the forefront of if not everything, at least most official actions they take as our duly elected representatives.
The fact that citizens who only address the big money issue of pensions and actually give cover to those who mislead and lie to us on so much else makes those citizens part of the entire problem and not part of the solution. You can not be honest with pensions and dishonest with everything else and expect a better outcome for both the taxpayers and the citizens of this once great state of California. There is nothing good to come out of supporting your crooked politician because he/she throws us a bone once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, the bone usually is hollow as well. It is usually political grandstanding and not real. So highlighting nothing other than skyrocketing pension costs will not get us where we need to be….which is for once getting a more honest, transparent government led by elected officials with equal parts integrity and courage.
So when will you pension writers start to call out the phonies who say they are for pension reform while lying to us on so many other very important issues and at the same time accomplishing little or nothing in the pension arena either.
A good start in the City of Fullerton would be to ask for the resignations of all Fullerton City Council members,
Whitaker,
Sebourn,
Fitzgerald,
Chaffee
and Silva
for their repealing a very good law based on false information and assumptions.
It was Fullerton Ordinance 3149, the Child Sex Offender Residency Restriction Act. Now formerly convicted child rapists, molesters, etc. can live right next door to any school, park, pre-school and day-care center in Fullerton thanks to each and every council member going along with a deceitful false premise provided by none other than Fullerton City Attorney, James Touchstone. That false premise was that the Fullerton ordinance covered all sex offenders when in fact it explicitly stated that it dealt specifically with only child sex offenders. The fact is that in no California court has the residency restriction of just child sex offenders every been adjudicated or challenged. The question then remains why would all five council members take action to benefit pedophiles while at the same time making it less safe for our children?
City attorney Dick Jones
It is a question that we the citizens of Fullerton deserve a complete and honest answer to! But I can guarantee that will never happen and that is precisely why they all need to be thrown out of office.
#1 by Barry Levinson on May 27, 2017 - 9:13 am
Please note that my post above is not criticizing those that point out how badly the pension mess has been handled and made much worse by our California politicians. It is absolutely true and as I stated above it is the number one financial disaster created by our California elected representatives.
At this point I have to give a warm shout out to Jan Flory, Don Bankhead, Dick Jones and the other financial giants who approved the 90% safety pension at 30 years starting as early as age 50 in Fullerton in 2002. Bankhead even mimicked the PERS Board to state it would not cost the Fullerton taxpayers a penny. Well he was sort of right as that vote will cost the California taxpayers not a penny but billions dollars eventually and cost the Fullerton taxpayers eventually somewhere close 500 million dollars. Thanks to all the crooked and/or totally ignorant politicians who spent little or no time actually analyzing the 90% pension at 30 years starting at the age of 50 pension change. By the way to make this worse much worse they retroactively gave out this benefit to every safety employee actively working back to day one of their service. That meant that some got this huge benefit retroactive 30 plus years. Thanks Don, Jan and DIck for being so so extraordinary generous with our tax dollars. You truly belong to my newly created Fullerton City Council Hall of Shame.