Callifornia County Administrator to make over $420,000 per year for LIFE.

Listen, I'm not defending it... But, I'm not sure your conclusions are valid.

First, this isn't just some run-of-the-mill county job, like garbage collection or a clerk down at the county offices. She's the County Administrator for a county with 1.5 million people. Those jobs get farmed out these days, after personnel searches, and are typically subject to some sort of contractual agreement, not just civil service regulations. You live near DFW....virtually all of the high-level management positions are filled by folks who are sought out for the job because of a special skill set and not necessarily promoted up. City manager in Dallas makes $278,000 a year. And she hasn't been here 10 years, much less 30. They're looking for someone to run Parkland right now.....at a projected salary of $950,000 per year. Ultimately, Dallas County taxpayers are on the hook for that. City Manager in Irving makes $256,000 and could go to over $400,000 if incentives kick in by him hitting certain goals for the city. It's what your precious market will bear.

Second, the idea that these positions are civil service positions with the job security that you seem to think should be what justifies lower compensation levels for government employees versus private employees: I don't think these folks get that security. Their employment is subject to a written contractual agreement that controls hiring, job duties and circumstances meriting termination. It's not the same. Admittedly, I don't know what the terms are in this Alameda County person's contract. Maybe she is jus a simple county employee. But, I doubt it. The article makes it sound like she is good at her job, and they dangled bucks in front of her to keep her.

Also, I have yet to see anything but speculation and conjecture that this particular person's compensation package is causing problems, now or in the future, for Alameda County. Has Alameda County requested a federal government bailout? As usual, its seems like the doom and gloom crisis isn't quite here yet but, we have the usual assurances, from the usual crowd, that it's on the way.

Finally, I guess if the dumbasses in Alameda County want to pay their County Adminstrator those kinds of dollars, it's up to them. If they don't, they need to make some changes. Totally agree with you that they're not entitled to a bailout if it goes south on them.

Oh, and Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative curmudgeon who is critical of just about everything that post-dates his graduation from college.

You're right, there wouldn't be much criticism in private employment. But there shouldn't be. If Office Depot overcompensates its senior sales managers, it doesn't affect me. I'll shop elsewhere if their prices are too high, and they will go broke if they don't fix the situation.

But taxpayers are fucked in her county. They are stuck with her compensation package for a long time to come. Even worse than the Mets were stuck with Bobby Bonilla's contact for half of forever.

Government jobs traditionally paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. The tradeoff was that you had better job security than you would have had in the private sector. When you work for the state or county, you don't have to worry about your "company" going broke or about being downsized after a merger.

That situation has been changing thanks to large public employee unions and compliant politicians looking for votes. Many public employees are compensated as well as or even better than their private sector counterparts and their jobs are STILL virtually guaranteed. This is a wort of both worlds approach.

Read Captain Midnight's post above. This has happened many times in California already. The state is going broke on compensation for its public employees. And they have been seeking bailouts from the federal government.

Fuck them. They broke it. They can fix it.

This isn't a natural disaster. it is man-made.

If an earthquake wrecked the SF Bay area, then the rest of the country should help with the bailout. If bad governance wrecks the SF Bay area, then the rest of the country should let them figure out how to fix their own mess.

Public employee pensions with defined benefits should be ENDED. They should have a 401(k) or the equivalent where they have a defined contribution. Their retirement should be based on what they save, not what they can vote themselves. Originally Posted by ExNYer

Listen, I'm not defending it... But, I'm not sure your conclusions are valid.

First, this isn't just some run-of-the-mill county job, like garbage collection or a clerk down at the county offices. She's the County Administrator for a county with 1.5 million people. Those jobs get farmed out these days, after personnel searches, and are typically subject to some sort of contractual agreement, not just civil service regulations. You live near DFW....virtually all of the high-level management positions are filled by folks who are sought out for the job because of a special skill set and not necessarily promoted up. City manager in Dallas makes $278,000 a year. And she hasn't been here 10 years, much less 30. They're looking for someone to run Parkland right now.....at a projected salary of $950,000 per year. Ultimately, Dallas County taxpayers are on the hook for that. City Manager in Irving makes $256,000 and could go to over $400,000 if incentives kick in by him hitting certain goals for the city. It's what your precious market will bear.

Second, the idea that these positions are civil service positions with the job security that you seem to think should be what justifies lower compensation levels for government employees versus private employees: I don't think these folks get that security. Their employment is subject to a written contractual agreement that controls hiring, job duties and circumstances meriting termination. It's not the same. Admittedly, I don't know what the terms are in this Alameda County person's contract. Maybe she is jus a simple county employee. But, I doubt it. The article makes it sound like she is good at her job, and they dangled bucks in front of her to keep her.

Also, I have yet to see anything but speculation and conjecture that this particular person's compensation package is causing problems, now or in the future, for Alameda County. Has Alameda County requested a federal government bailout? As usual, its seems like the doom and gloom crisis isn't quite here yet but, we have the usual assurances, from the usual crowd, that it's on the way.

Finally, I guess if the dumbasses in Alameda County want to pay their County Adminstrator those kinds of dollars, it's up to them. If they don't, they need to make some changes. Totally agree with you that they're not entitled to a bailout if it goes south on them.

Oh, and Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative curmudgeon who is critical of just about everything that post-dates his graduation from college. Originally Posted by timpage

$420K in Cali = COLA

You completely missed the point. And I do mean completely.

No one cares what SHE thinks about her salary. I'm sure she is happy with it. The question is why did the county ever give it to her? Who VOTED on that level and why? And ALL taxpayers get stuck with paying it, not voluntary customers.

If the California Angels gave Josh Hamilton $25 million per year, it does not cost me or any other taxpayers any increase in taxes. I can refuse to by tickets to the Angels games and so can every single person in California. Josh Hamilton's money comes out of private pockets. If the Angels overpay and people stop buying tickets that are now too expensive, then the Angels may go bankrupt. And it STILL costs me nothing.

The same goes for CEOs of private companies. If the board of directors of American Airlines votes to pay the CEO too much money, then they will price themselves out of the market. I can fly United or Delta instead of AA.

But politicians are not spending their own money, they are spending taxpayer's money. In California, the politicians are voting outlandish pay packages to themselves and other state/county employees - the kind of money they would NEVER get in a free market.

And they can stick taxpayers with the bill.

So, if California permits its public employees to make this kind of money, then California must figure out how to pay for it. They cannot turn to other states to bail them out. Originally Posted by ExNYer

My apologies Ex-Nyer after carefully re-reading the article I see where the outrage come from- my bad.

Oh, and Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative curmudgeon who is critical of just about everything that post-dates his graduation from college. Originally Posted by timpage

You may certainly think that seems to be so, but there is plenty to be critical of, especially concerning issues connected to the topic of this thread. But do you have any fundamental disagreements with the points he made in either of the two articles I linked?

A ballooning entitlement culture is obviously infecting the nation as a whole, and has been trickling down to states, counties, and municipalities for years. Although the disease is worst in states like California and Illinois, it's very widespread. If we don't see a trend toward more responsible governance, the entire country may soon look like California writ large, although with far less beautiful scenery per square mile.

One notable thing that's happened recently in California is that the big-spenders began to get giddy about a rush of new revenue coming into the state's coffers at the end of 2012. But it turns out that what was going on was that a lot of high earners realized income in 2012 that otherwise would have been reported on 2013 returns. You may recall that the state's income tax rate was raised from 10.3% to 13.3%, effective January 1st of this year.

Just wait and see. It will soon become clear that much of the expected additional revenue from tax increases on high earners will have pulled a disappearing act, and California's fiscal follies will become exposed.

I haven't checked specifically on Alameda County, but officials of cities and counties all over the state have made statements regarding future funding needs for defined-benefit pension funds that are grossly unrealistic unless some sort of miracle occurs.

One of the key enabling events is that California's legislature loosened up all the rules and passed all sorts of stuff when the state's (and the nation's) economy boomed in the high-flying market days of the late 1990s. People suffer from what I often refer to as "extrapolation bias" and assume that high rates of return are here to stay.

In such flush times, a lot of foolish and unsustainable promises are made, and the stage is set in such a way that it's politically very difficult to rein them in when the economic and market outlook is less good.