Last night Gordon Smith said he believes Congress will "probably" give Oregon counties a temporary (one year) stay of execution by providing federal funding for one year. If that happens the county will have a much smaller layoff this year -- and delay the larger layoff until this time next year.

If that happens I'll urge the commissioners to repeal their tax so they can get back to systematically dismantling the local law enforcement system as most of you wish. If they hurry they can have the system thoroughly gutted before the cuts have to be in place next June.

Blogs are fine, but if you want to actually make a difference, you can call the commissioners and leave a vote to repeal the tax if the federal money comes through, then you can tell them you'd like to have the rest of the staff cuts fully implemented ASAP.

AMAZING,

Thats perfect this way people have time to find new jobs in a year.

What was for nothing was the commisioners decision to cause this commotion. They should have waited until this was settled before acting. And another thing if this had not not been stoppped by Ben Pooler and his people the commisioners would still have kept the tax. They say they would  have "reduced" it but you and I know that would never happen and even if it was "reduced" we would still be paying a tax that we didn't have a say in.

So the only thing that was for nothing as you put it was the commisioners decision to piss everybody off for no reason.

bigdode:

Thats perfect this way people have time to find new jobs in a year.

What was for nothing was the commisioners decision to cause this commotion. They should have waited until this was settled before acting. And another thing if this had not not been stoppped by Ben Pooler and his people the commisioners would still have kept the tax. They say they would  have "reduced" it but you and I know that would never happen and even if it was "reduced" we would still be paying a tax that we didn't have a say in.

So the only thing that was for nothing as you put it was the commisioners decision to piss everybody off for no reason.

The commissioners obviously failed to accurately assess the depth of our collective ignorance and apathy, a disappointing reality you confirm each time your fingers touch your keyboard.

The commissioners initially proposed an income tax because they believed the community would be willing to pay a nominal tax in order to stem the tide of increasing crime and restore county law enforcement and safety staffing to the point where we'd break into the bottom 20% in the USA. The narrow loss at the polls told them that a slight majority would rather remain crime-ridden than carry an overall tax burden that would be almost the US average.

When the federal funding was not renewed the commissioners believed the public would expect them to do something to prevent wholesale layoffs and the resulting system collapse. They were wrong. According to our enthusiastic petitioners, it's not enough to be dead last in US public safety staffing; if we can't get somebody else to pay for it, we're prepared to cut the system out entirely -- even if the county is the only provider of the services!

Even if Senator Smith is correct and the federal money is renewed, the county will have to start layoffs before June in order to balance the budget. The commissioners can either close the county parks or layoff more cops, DAs and POs. Here, the people will undoubtedly petition the commissioners to get rid of as many cops as it takes to keep the parks and boat-ramps open, but that's not the way it works in the rest of the country - or even the rest of Oregon. Most communities value public safety above other government services.

It's hard to imagine a community being this short-sighted. We're going to continue to pay, as insurance rates climb to pay for our almost-worst-in-US car theft and burglary rates. Businesses are already paying, and their costs are consistently passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, rates, credit card fees, etc. We're paying in other ways too -- like unsolved murders because all but four detectives have laid-off, and the four remaining people are buried in robberies, child abuse and homicide.  Oh well...

Frankly, I've become resigned to it. We're ready to move to Washington or Idaho and watch this little  experiment from afar - where we don't have to worry about our car being smashed or stolen when we go Christmas shopping.

Spanky,

I've seen several of your posts here - all well thought out and laden with appropriate facts. Hard to quarrel with that.

My heartburn with this income tax, and every tax dollar collected by Oregon and its communities, is the amount that gets siphoned off to fund PERS. We are saddled with this inequitable, unjustified, horribly expensive public retirement plan that runs roughshod over every public agency in Oregon. I know that the local bureaucrats - commissioners, the DA, the sheriff, et al - cannot directly change PERS. Apparently the governor is powerless, too.

So, is our only course of action to shut-up, accept it, and pay its toll? I don’t think so, and I’ll never accept those conditions. If our local and state leaders won’t step up to do what must be done, then the job gets foisted on the taxpayers to take the measure of last resort. Sadly, the taxpayers are not the best designers of law and sound fiscal policy. Look what happened when they were forced to deal with rampantly growing property taxes. Hatchet surgery.

And so, this taxpayer stands ready with the hatchet. If the elected leadership won’t deal with PERS, or ignorantly assumes it not to be a problem, then my only recourse is to swing the hatchet, so to speak, and starve PERS out of existence. Unfortunately, the elected politicians and their lackeys will sacrifice every vital public service known to man before they will put PERS on the block. If that’s the path I have to take to get it there, I will – and grit my teeth and accept the resulting carnage. And I’ll not stand by silently and listen to the victims say it is my fault. The burden of responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of PERS and its sponsors.

The PERS toll has been an average 25% contribution rate required of employers since 2000 – a $10 billion toll. The rate exceeded 60% in 2004. PERS requires a minimum 8% return every year. With $56 billion in assets today, that’s a $4.5 billion nut to cover. If the market should decline a bit, say 2% for example, it takes almost $6 billion to make it up. Add in the additional contributions just to keep up with new hires and the growth required to fund their approaching retirement and it’s a total killer. The load isn’t quite so terrible right now because the market’s been on roll – until last week.

The price of my support for public services? Kill PERS. Replace it with a defined-contribution 401k, with employer matching funds not to exceed 6% of base payroll, and I’ll be back on board. I won’t even take the moral high road and demand that PERS recipients be placed at tax-parity with other taxpayers. That’s about the limit of my flexibility on the matter.

Well, actually it’s not. I’d soften my position, I’d support this tax, I’d bend over and take it, if all the proponents of the tax would do one thing: stop talking about the cheap deal that the taxpayers have today, take a vocal public position that PERS is ruining public budgets, and call for the governor and legislature to take immediate and decisive action to eliminate the problem. Until they’re willing to at least be that honest, I will not entrust another nickel of my money to them.

Very well said Roger

Roger:

Spanky,

My heartburn with this income tax, and every tax dollar collected by Oregon and its communities, is the amount that gets siphoned off to fund PERS. We are saddled with this inequitable, unjustified, horribly expensive public retirement plan that runs roughshod over every public agency in Oregon. I know that the local bureaucrats - commissioners, the DA, the sheriff, et al - cannot directly change PERS. Apparently the governor is powerless, too.

So, is our only course of action to shut-up, accept it, and pay its toll? I don’t think so, and I’ll never accept those conditions. If our local and state leaders won’t step up to do what must be done, then the job gets foisted on the taxpayers to take the measure of last resort. Sadly, the taxpayers are not the best designers of law and sound fiscal policy. Look what happened when they were forced to deal with rampantly growing property taxes. Hatchet surgery.

And so, this taxpayer stands ready with the hatchet. If the elected leadership won’t deal with PERS...<snip>

Good points, Roger.

The good news is, about five years ago, Lane County and the City of Eugene joined in a lawsuit attacking PERS. They prevailed and PERS benefits for future retirees were  subsequently gutted. The new plan, in place since January 2004, involves a simple 6% contribution to a 401-like program called the "AIP". In Lane County the full 6% contribution was initially withheld from employee paychecks as a forced employee contribution (as opposed to an employer contribution.) The County subsequently negotiated to pick up the employee contribution over a period of years in lieu of raises (depending on the union contract). As you probably know, it costs the county less to cover a 2% contribution to retirement than it costs to increase the wages 2%, so this decision was the proverbial win-win deal for employee and employer, again.

The effect of the PERS reform depends on how long a particular employee has been in the system. A 30 year employee on the verge of retirement in 2005 saw little change to his retirement benefit as it had already been earned and defined by the eve of his retirement, but a twenty year employee with ten years to go before retirement saw a drop of as much as 35% or 40% in his projected benefit. That’s a heck of a scary jolt for a fifty-three year old guy who has no ability to adjust his savings plan to compensate for the devastating legislative surprise. From the taxpayers perspective, it’s about time, I suppose. From the perspective of an employee who has been planning on a government promise for twenty years, it’s and breach of contract from which he can never recover.

Where PERS is the most expensive, and the most outrageous, is in the context of employees who are receiving a very generous retirement benefit on top of a very generous pay-rate and benefit package. Such employees are rare, but they exist. There are many other PERS employees, including all the professionals and managers, for whom PERS was the only good part of otherwise very weak compensation plan. For example, senior lawyers who become Circuit Court Judges in Oregon earn approximately $95,000 – which is significantly less than the top law students can expect to be paid to start in a large Portland law firm. (Oregon judges are now ranked LAST in the US, of course.) The Lane County Administrator, a lawyer with 30 years experience and exceptional expertise in labor law, finance, construction, bond structuring, and a dozen other critical areas earns about $120,000. He’d be making $165,000 if he worked for the city of Eugene, twice as much if he had remained in an average private law practice doing similar work, or three to five times as much if he occupied a position of similar responsibility as a CEO of a $480 million business in the in the northwest. Yes, he earns more that the average Eugene resident, but that’s irrelevant, as he’s nothing like the average Eugene resident, and neither is his job. The relevant questions are 1) What does it cost if you get somebody in that position who isn’t qualified? (Answer: a LOT – it’s easy for such a person to make “small” mistakes in bonding, contracting, union negotiation, land purchases, and the like that could cost as much as a half percent or 1%  county budget in a year. For most of us with a household income of, say, $50,000 a series of cumulative judgment errors that added up to 1% “oops” would mean losing about $500 over the course of a year. For the County Administrator negotiating on behalf of Lane County, an error rate half that size (one-half-of-one percent) could cost $200,000 EVERY MONTH. If I were picking the next person for that job, I wouldn’t be concerned about saving $5,000 per month...I’d want to make sure I didn’t get the guy who might cost use $200,000 to $300,000 per month: I’d want the guy who would be hired to handle similar responsibilities for US Bank, or Boeing, or Sacred Heart...and I’d step up and pay the competitive price and expect his to save us more than he cost us. That’s the way it works in the real world — the business world. I wouldn’t expect to find such a person at one-fifth to one-tenth the market salary... So, in this context, to me, the Lane County Administrator earning $120,000 plus his PERS seems like a heck of a bargain.

Similarly, the nurses, doctors, District Attorneys, Engineers, and Department Directors ALL seem like bargains. Whether they make more than me is irrelevant.

I’m sure they’d all be delighted to forfeit ALL the FAT OLD PERS system if the county would trade them the equivalent of the average private sector salary differential going back to their first day on the job. For one of the lawyers in county counsel, for example, the county could recover the 12% PERS contribution on the $80,000 salary PLUS all the interest for fifteen years. And then the employee would get the $50,000 to $100,000 per year salary difference, for every year, with interest. Is the taxpayer getting a good deal? I think the taxpayer gets an incredibly good deal on the professionals, all of whom are making a fraction of private sector compensation. The deal on the leaf-blower guy is not good, but that’s not the example that people use to express their outrage. Oddly, they appeal to the ignorance of their audience and use the $100K salaries as the example of excess. I fact, there are only nine people making over $100,000 working for Lane County, and all but three of them are doctors or lawyers, all of whom could double their salaries by leaving Lane County. I’m sure the county can, and does, hire some less experienced lawyers, doctors and engineers for much of the work, as many of them are paid a LOT less than our plumber, but the government needs to retain some of the talent and experience for the big-challenges too. It would be absurd to have a second year law student trying a murder case against a 30 year veteran criminal defense lawyer, for example. And we don’t want a brand new doctor supervising whole teams of physicians and nurses; we don’t want the new engineering graduate evaluating and approving the Autzen stadium rebuild or the bridge going across I-5. Unfortunately, while they are willing to sacrifice the big money, the county can’t buy top talent for 20 cents on the dollar; sometimes it’s okay to recognize that 50 cents on the dollar plus a generous retirement program is a heck of a bargain – for the taxpayer. (If it was such a great deal for the doctors, lawyers and engineers they wouldn’t be leaving the county like rats running from a burning ship.)

I also recognize the fundamental unfairness of “taking a hatchet to somebody’s retirement near the end of their earning cycle when they have already delivered on their part of the bargain, and they have no opportunity to recover from the hatchet-job, no matter what they do. Many would not have chosen to remain in the public sector at sub-market salaries had it not been for the generous retirement program. (Many of the professional folks immediately bailed out to work in the private sector so they could double their salaries and start jamming money into retirement to compensate for the hit.)

This brings up the problem with the equity of the PERS reform. Nobody disagrees about the generosity of the former PERS retirement program. Aspects of it were arguably far too generous, especially when the retirement portion is weighed in isolation. The problem is this: The retirement package was a bargained-for-benefit in lieu of salary increases. In fact, many of the most generous components were negotiated at a time when the deal was of huge benefit to the taxpayers, and the deals were struck the last time the Oregon governments were financially stretched. The government repeatedly bargained for enhancements to the retirement program in lieu of raises. At it's fattest, the Tier 1 PERS program amounted to a guaranteed return of 8% per year on what amounted to contributions of 12% of gross salary. Now that's very, very generous. However, oddly, it would be much less offensive to most if the county was only contributing a total of 2% to retirement and the employees were earning salaries that were 10% higher - an option that would actually have been MORE expensive for the government.

The real problem wasn't the generosity of the contribution. It was the guaranteed rate of return and an alternative "variable" program which allowed government employees to invest their retirement programs in aggressive "variable" programs that consistently returned double-digit returns. The PERS was prevented from investing so aggressively, so their returns, though good, couldn't keep pace with the employees who benefited from a 17 year bull-market. The net result was a bolus of government employees who experienced explosive growth in the last fifteen years of their careers, retiring with HUGE balances in their retirement accounts that the state was required to match. Those folks, a small minority of PERS employees, cut a fat hog at our expense, with some entering retirement at or near 100% of their employed salary. However, if you go to the PERS website and look at the calculator, data, and graphs, you'll see that the vast majority of PERS employees are collecting very modest benefits. There are PLENTY of retired school teachers earning $1,500- $1800 per month checks and the like. The minority of retirees earning the fat salaries we hear about in the new are a very tiny minority. (The PERS site is worth a visit.)

Hi spanky,

   This is Ben Pooler. I have one bone to pick with you. And this is all want to say. The people of lane county have only one question. Why could'nt they vote on this, we do not live in a dictatorship in this country. What Stewart said yesterday on the news is a huge maybe. Nothing is for sure. Yes we will be out in force tomorrow getting petitions signed and it is our right. If you have any questions Spanky call me. Just goggle my name and put eugene OR after it and my number is listed on the top of the page. I'm looking forward to it. Signed One voice can make a differance.

Leave it to you to try to confuse the voters on this issue.  It shows how very disingenuous you really are.

All of the promises made yesterday are hollow and meaningless at this point in time. No vote of any kind has even yet been held to add restoring the Timber funds by adding them to the Emergency Supplemental bill in Congress.  The only thing that has happened is that the Democratic leadership has said they will allow a vote to add an amendment to the bill to restore the funds.   That is all.

The bill is not going to be reviewed by House and Senate Appropriations Committees until the week starting 3/19/07.  It could stay in committee for one to two weeks, before it then is then send on to the full House and Senate.

There are many watchdog groups already heavily lobbying Congress to eliminate "Pork Barrel" from the bill that is not directly related to the Iraq war effort.  While Smith is naturally in favor of this amendment for the Timber sales, the Republican leadership has not yet endorsed it.   And the President has already indicated that he will veto the current house bill if provisions forcing an end of the Iraq war next year are not removed.

So in reality, very little progress has been made in getting the timber funds restored.   There is still a very long road to travel, and getting this amendment past and added to the bill is by no means at all certain. 

In light of all of this, the timing of Faye Stewart's announcement is extremely suspect, and should not be trusted by anyone.

Regarding another point, it was interesting to hear the commissioners say that it was still possible for them to place the tax on the May ballot, even though you earlier badgered me that could not have even been done back on February 21st.

This was mentioned on the Register Guard website today, here:

http://www.registerguard.com/rgn/index.php/rgup/commissioners_at_odds_over_income_tax/

This fact proves that people here should not trust ANYTHING you have to say.   You are definitely trying to twist facts and confuse people.

Get out and sign the petitions tomorrow everyone!   Here is a list of all the locations:

Graffiti Alley, 675 River Road, Eugene.
Econo Lodge, 1190 W. Sixth Ave., Eugene.
Eugene Elks Lodge No. 357, 2470 W. 11th Ave., Eugene.
Immanuel Baptist Church, 3050 Game Farm Road, Springfield.
Emerald Isle Mobile Home Park, Recreation Room, 658 S. 57th St.,
Springfield.
Hearth & Patio Shop, 85295 Highway 101, Florence.
Ray’s Food Place, 25013 Highway 126, Veneta.
D&D Classic Automotive, 1180 Ivy St., Junction City.

Lance in Springfield