11-27-08, “Three Top Dogs in the Henhouse”, by Herbert Molano

So how do they do it? How is it possible that elected officials to whom the public have entrusted their hard earned tax dollars and quality of life find themselves kneeling before the three top employee organizations? This was always a puzzle to me, but then I was not privy to municipal politics when I started this journey. How exactly do these salary negotiators impose their will on the rest of us?

Back in 2003, during Charter Review committee, I asked assistant city manager Bob McFall what events caused the need for management to create the GMA (Glendale Management Association.) It seemed the most bizarre concoction. Imagine management representatives supposedly doing a work stoppage for not getting what they want. Whom would they have a complaint against? McFall explained to me that it was too complex for him to tell me at that time. We were talking during the break the committee normally took around eight PM. I never heard back from him.

The answer came to me at the next election two years later. There, in form 460, was a list of contributions from this group to the incumbents running for office. Not only was this group giving tens of thousands of dollars to councilmen, the Glendale Police Officer Association was handing out money as if glad handing their benefactors. The year before, the city had not only increased their ranks, they had also approved urgent ordinances to move salary increases to several sub-groups in this department. 

But the Glendale Fire Department had gotten into the act big time a few years earlier. The city had approved doing away with the private paramedic service on the promise by the GFD that it could do it cheaper and the city would have fewer complaints. Well, I haven't been able to find records pertinent to the complaints by the public on the private EMT companies. Now I've found transfers from the General Fund, nearly 1.5 million this past fiscal year alone, to subsidize this GFD service. Their salaries have been nothing but astronomical. Imagine a High School graduate with four months of training and one year of trial employment beginning by earning $120,000 a year, and much more than that in subsequent years. Now most people don't know that an EMT in the private sector hardly makes $11 per hour or about $23,000 per year. It is absurd to imagine a $120,000 salary that is equivalent to what a first year MD makes as a general practitioner at Kaiser.

How much money did it take to create such hefty salary increases to the Holy Alliance of City Employees? For 2005 it took $60,000 dollars plus well-placed endorsements of sworn men with badges. Here their investment of $60,000 would guarantee multi-million, multi-year salary increases for their group. Let's assume that the increased salary and benefits above the inflation rate was 8 million in two years. Let’s make the calculation simple: $1.00 invested in the city council candidates has over 100 times return on investment.   

Why in the world would a candidate for city council accept such a pact? For that egregious exchange to make sense, you need to rule out any adherence to sound fiscal policy by any of these men. Those salary and staff increases have resulted in unsustainable General Fund expenditures from the traditional sources of Revenue. You can take all the increased property tax revenue from all the home and buildings that were sold or constructed giving new assessment valuation. Then you can add all the increased sales tax revenue from all the new commercial retail establishments. Combine them both and you still can't sustain the increase in salaries and benefits. So how can they make up for those expenditures if there is not sufficient revenue? The answer comes with the ability to transfer income from Glendale Water and Power. 

But, incredibly, even with transfers exceeding 20 million per year, it is not enough. This city management has resorted to transferring from the Capital improvement funds also. Millions are transferred from that fund by delaying much needed repairs to roads and infrastructure. But wait, there is more! This city council has approved taking money from the reserves - that rainy day fund for dire urgencies. 

We can only conclude, and this is the only possible logical answer: There is no moral connection to the welfare or the quality of life of the city's taxpayers and residents. These councilmen ran for office predisposed to barter the public welfare for their personal ambition. I mean that. You can't morally account for that sinister exchange: Burden future Glendale residents with pension obligations that will eat up the city's funds for decades, and do it for a few thousand dollars of campaign contributions. 

Last fiscal year all the members of this city council formalized an agreement with the GMA, the official negotiating entity for city management. We have now formalized one more insult. City managers will officially be paid, not based on their performance, but rather upon what they can negotiate. So if a manager causes through his own negligence a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and the city loses, he can continue to request and expect salary increases. We've seen it before with the sexual harassment case against named police personnel. Millions of dollars were lost and no one was held accountable.

All this abuse is possible only if at last three councilmen can be bought this easily. No one can sell his soul this way unless there is already a predisposition for moral malleability when accepting a council office. You can't in good conscience accept such abuse of the city's funds, and at the same time, as a direct consequence of those actions, accept the largest utility rate increases that are currently putting a strain on so many residents' budgets.

But if you think you've seen it all, there is more poison in this juice.

Next week - More on the separation of salaries from accountability.

Herbert Molano