Closed-Door Government Costs More, Corrupts Politics
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
01/11/09 2:39 PM EST
When public officials close the doors to make decisions, you can bet they are doing something they don't want taxpayers to know about. Doesn't make any difference whether the officials are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. The Fullerton (CA) city council just provided a perfect illustration of this maxim.
"Now comes Fullerton's city council, which this week voted against a contract to increase most government workers' pensions by 25 percent, retroactive to the employee's hire date. The council had approved the new deal in a closed door session, according to The Orange County Register, but then backed away from it when one council member made the pension increase public," reports The Sacremento Bee's Jon Ortiz on The State Worker blog.
"Retiring Fullerton employees get up to 60 percent of their final year's pay; the new plan would have boosted that to 75 percent of final year's pay and counted all years of service in the formula," Ortiz added.
Note the mere public exposure of what they had done in secret caused the council members to reverse a decision that, had it stood unchanged, would have added significantly to the long-term liability of Fullerton taxpayers.
Public employee pensions at all levels of government are a constant temptation to public officials, in part because benefits calculations tend to be somewhat esoteric for non-specialists and because officials are often able to conceal the true cost of what they approve. Giving them the opportunity to make benefits decisions in secret simply compounds the temptation.
The politics of the Fullerton vote included the fact the concealed deal to hike city employees' pension benefits retroactively was pushed by the public employee union and Don Bankhead, the Fullerton mayor, who is, according to The Orange County Register, "a big government guy."
Bankhead has spent a lot of time in recent weeks bashing Councilman Shawn Nelson, who is the guy who blew the whistle on the union-backed deal, for leveling with the public about what was being done to taxpayers.
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