Supervisors Jerry Muenzer, Robert Rivas and Jaime De La Cruz did
serious damage to San Bento County last week when they indicated
they would vote against sending two of three layoff notices
recommended by Sheriff Darren Thompson.
Supervisors Jerry Muenzer, Robert Rivas and Jaime De La Cruz did serious damage to San Bento County last week when they indicated they would vote against sending two of three layoff notices recommended by Sheriff Darren Thompson.
The board last week ended up tabling consideration of sending layoff notices to three county employees.
In a single swoop, they managed to undercut their own authority, the new sheriff and the county executive staff, and make the difficult job of the county labor negotiator just that much more complicated.
Last year, the board demanded that former Sheriff Curtis Hill make significant budget cuts knowing they would involve layoffs. The board did nothing but complain when Hill could not find an acceptable solution. When Hill retired, they passed the job to Thompson. Now the sheriff shows up with his solution – fulfilling the charge they gave him – and the board does exactly what they had condemned Hill for.
They punted.
It’s important to understand that these were not layoffs, merely the required advanced notices. If the union wants to save those jobs, the notices are the first step in starting serious negotiations. Until the notices go out, the clock is not moving and the costs are just kicked down the road again. The average position in the San Benito County Corrections Department costs the county $99,640 a year, and more than $96,000 of that goes to the net benefit of the employees in salaries and benefits – such as group insurance and retirement funding.
Newly elected board members Rivas and Muenzer may not have realized the full impact of their ill-advised stances, but De La Cruz cannot use that excuse.
He’s been around the block. His shoot-from-the-hip chaotic motions – too often changed on the fly – and his voting record are especially disappointing. He originally sold himself as a fiscal conservative determined to get the budget under control, and now it appears he believes the county coffers are nothing but a jobs program to buy votes – and board meetings are nothing but an opportunity to put in plugs for his employer.
The supervisors just ended up negotiating with themselves and, frankly, they looked like rank amateurs as the union representative publicly berated them over claims of excess executive compensation. The union essentially argued that the county should let the union decide how the county spends its funds, what the executives make and how the savings are to be redistributed to the workers – instead of for the benefit of the taxpayers. It looked like an old confrontation at General Motors.
While the taxpayers, public employees and new officeholders take the heat, the real villains – enabling politicians and aggressive union organizers – stand on the sidelines and feed ammunition to their favorite teams. The bloodier it gets, the better they like it. It’s good for political contributions and, more important, it obscures their past sins. Meanwhile, the current officeholders have inherited an impossible situation, some of their own making.
We have promised far more than we can deliver and have been doing so for decades because both sides were concerned with the here and now. No one ever received a benefit package unless they demanded it and someone on the other side agreed to the deal. Now the county administration wants givebacks and the union refuses, and the only reasonable alternative is lousy – layoffs.
If this is not solved with long-term concessions to bring total employment costs under control, the county risks a revolt by the real 600-pound gorillas – the taxpayers.
This editorial was published in Tuesday’s Free Lance.
