Things happen first in California, Californians like to say, and then spread across the country.
Kansas doesn’t need what’s happening in Costa Mesa. The city there handed out pink slips to 213 of its employees — nearly half of the city crew — and announced that it would contract with other cities and with private industries to provide the services left un-manned.
Why? The city’s budget is somewhere between $10 million and $15 million in the hole, primarily because of enormous payments to pension and health care funds.
Costa Mesa made promises to its city employees in the past that it cannot keep today. Police and firemen can retire at 50. Some will get six-figure pensions in addition to health care coverage for life. They also enjoy salaries of $100,000 or more a year today.
What Costa Mesa and other cities that have followed in that path must do is find a legal way to tear up these preposterous agreements and start fresh. The same must be said for state governments with huge unfunded obligations.
What Costa Mesa found itself dealing with was the prospect of spending 15 percent or more of its yearly income on its city worker retirement benefits, a burden which would require substantial tax increases and would make it financially impossible to take care of the needs of the rest of the city’s citizens.
It is more than likely that Costa Mesa will have to find another solution than the one it chose. Contracting with outsiders to provide fire and police protection along with 16 other city functions is bound to prove expensive and unsatisfactory over the long run.
It is just as obvious that the city cannot honor the employment contracts it has made and can only re-establish a municipal work force under affordable terms. The municipal equivalent of bankruptcy protection is on the horizon.
Costa Mesa’s dilemma posts a warning. It did happen there. It should be quarantined before it spreads.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
