Public officials get schooled on pension reform | county, pension, employees - News - The Orange County Register

While Wisconsin's Republican governor has garnered national headlines for his aggressive assault on public employee unions, Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh is laying the groundwork for a related campaign.

A self-described "boot camp" Thursday for public officials, focusing on the need for pension reform, attracted 175 paid attendees from cities in Orange County and throughout the state. Its 19 speakers included accounting and pension specialists, labor law and bankruptcy lawyers, former legislators, and a communications expert.

The Irvine Hyatt event, organized by Baugh and sponsored by the non -partisan California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, also got the attention of key unions.

The head of the Orange County Employees Association wrote the county's elected officials, criticizing the event as "short-term political opportunism." That union, which represents some 11,500 county employees, sent its general counsel and its spokeswoman to monitor the seminar, while the Service Employees International Union sent its Los Angeles-based political coordinator.

There was plenty of blame to go around as the parade of experts took the podium. Executive managers took advantage of the system for their own benefit, administrators endorsed generous union deals, and elected officials approved the pensions now being called unsustainable.

But the primary beneficiaries of pension largesse are members of public employee unions. Those unions were repeatedly portrayed as the key culprit and the primary obstacle to reform.

SEIU political coordinator Mark Klein arrived with copies of a study by the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, which argues that the pension crisis is overstated – that shortfalls are primarily due to the downturn in the stock market, and are self-correcting.

But that wasn't something you heard from the seminar podium.

"The problem is that there have been 30 years of increases of pension benefits, notch by notch ... with the promise that the Dow would grow to the moon," Girard Miller, author of the "Elected Official's Guide to Government Finance," told the crowd. "Meanwhile, there's been no increase in employee contribution – in fact, it's gone the other direction."

Nationwide estimates of the funding shortfall for public pensions start at $1 trillion, with some estimates as high as $4 trillion.

OCEA has not only acknowledged that some pension reforms are in order, but was one of the first unions to agree to changes – including adoption of a 401 (k)-style hybrid as an employee option.

Baugh applauded the gesture at the seminar but said far more was needed. He then introduced a county retirement board member Wayne Lindholm, who presented a chart that showed OCEA members contribute an average of 9 percent of their salary to their pension while the county contributes an amount equal to 37 percent.

OCEA's Jennifer Muir told me employee contributions were more usually 10 percent to 13 percent, and she also challenged the 37 percent figure.

But numbers aside, Muir asked a good question: Why aren't county elected officials and executive managers leading by example?

Robert Kinsler, spokesman for the Orange County Employees Retirement System, said there were too many variables to easily average the contributions of either union employees or executives. But he did confirm that executives’ contribution amounts were largely paid by the county and that executives generally contribute a lower percentage than union employees.