Editorial: Onerous bill would fiscally drown cities, counties
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the April 18, 2017, East Bay Times.
California’s cities and counties, weighed down by ever-mounting retirement costs, are barely keeping their heads above water. Now the state Legislature is considering an onerous bill that would ensure many of them drown.
AB1250, introduced by Assemblyman Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, would effectively prohibit most local governments from contracting out for key services. It’s a union-driven bid to force the hiring of more public employees, complete with their unaffordable high benefit costs.
Never mind that local governments are struggling to meet current obligations, or that public employee pension benefits have already saddled taxpayers in California with at least $374 billion of debt.