California or Bust … and Go Broke. The Okies had it pretty much right. Today in the Golden State, 341,000 state and local government employees earn more than $100,000 in salary or pension payments. The statistics in this post come from OpenTheBooks.com and their article in RealClear Politics. Don’t worry; the HEROES Act will bail us out. Does the cost of living in California necessitate such salaries?
If so the state should tackle local government policies designed to keep housing prices high. Another thing they could do is to begin taming the public employee unions. Their bargaining helped 44 lifeguards in Los Angeles County earn between $300,000 and $365,000. Then there’s the $501,000 per year nurse working for the university medical system. Good work if you can get it, right?
In San Francisco, 9,425 employees earn total compensation exceeding $200,000 annually. The city disclosed that a sheriff in corrections made $315,000… in overtime. In San Francisco, taxpayers cough up $452,421 annually to pay a salary ($343,000) and benefits ($109,447) to Mayor London Breed. He’s the mayor with the highest pay in the country. He’s unofficially the King of Poop Street.
Members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors are also generous to themselves. These public servants didn’t earn their steady raises by running a tight ship. The state controller’s government compensation website says the following.
Profligate spending
Over a five-year period from 2013 to 2018, the amount San Francisco paid in total wages jumped 27.6%. Total wages went from $2.9 billion for 35,771 employees in 2013. It went to total wages of $3.7 billion for 40,951 employees in 2018. The number of employees went up about 14.5%. At the same time the average wage went up about 11.4%.
Among the new hires: The members of “poop patrol.” They are paid $184,000 a year to clean up human waste. It is left by the city’s burgeoning homeless population.
This is no laughing matter. And it’s not strictly a local problem. Speaker Pelosi came of age in San Francisco politics. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was born and raised there. They aren’t looking to local politicians to tighten their belts or enact smarter policies.
Both of them are looking for Washington to simply bail out the city… along with the rest of the state. California will get $48 billion HEROES Bucks from the Pelosi Bailout Bill. That is nearly a dollar for dollar bailout of its highly compensated employees. California or Bust … and Go Broke … and take as many with you as you can.
Why is it reasonable for frugal places which have lived within their means bailout California? We do without… so we get stuck with the bill for their wasteful spending? On what planet is that fair? Bad decisions yield sub-optimal results. Let’s not be heroes and bailout these Bozo’s who have been living the high life.
