It is now clear that after a decade of hearing how fiscally brilliant our County Supervisors are, the county pension system is for all purposes in collapse. It's also clear that the outrageous pensions increases voted on by all five of the sitting Supervisors are the reason for the collapse. This is all covered in an excellent ongoing investigation by the Voice of San Diego and you can read it HERE. I'm not going to try to rehash it all - it's worth reading yourself - but here is basically what happened (from the Voice):

By all indications, the county's pension system was very healthy -- if not exemplary -- throughout the decade ending in 2002. But in February 2002, county supervisors granted themselves and their employees a pension enhancement that not only benefited workers from that day forward but retroactively as well.

The benefit increases that year were considerable. Employees who had been working under the presumption that they would receive 2 percent of their highest average salary multiplied by the number of years they worked, suddenly had the opportunity to opt in to a program that gave them 3 percent.

For an employee who had worked 25 years and expected a final average salary of $40,000, that meant her expected annual pension instantly went up from $20,000 to $30,000.

The underlines are mine.

For all of us who work in the private sector - can you imagine any kind of pension increase like this? Retroactive? Worse, the Supervisors had the gall to make the pension increase apply to themselves!

It gets better though (again from the Voice) when they explain why they burdened the taxpayer with this anvil of a pension:

County staff explained then that "approval of the recommended actions will significantly enhance the county's ability to attract and retain the best and the brightest employees," according to records of meetings in February 2002, when the board approved the measure.

Cox said the county had trouble keeping quality employees.

"The pensions we offered prior to 2002 were adversely affecting our ability to recruit and retain upper level managers," Cox said. And, moreover, employees working next to each other were sometimes expecting wildly different pension benefits.

"We needed to try to bring everyone up to the same level," Cox said.

Comment to Supervisor Greg Cox and the rest of the politicians in this community: government workers are NOT SUPPOSED TO EARN WHAT WE EARN IN THE PRIVATE MARKET - THAT IS WHY THEY HAVE RULES PROTECTING THEIR EMPLOYMENT AND PENSIONS. THE IDEA IS THEY EARN LESS, WON'T GET FIRED EXCEPT FOR CAUSE, AND WE WILL TAKE CARE OF THEM IN OLD AGE. One guesses that considering the pension blow up the 'best and brightest' were hardly that.

It's past time letting politicians get away with this sort of venal, reckless behavior. It's time we started demanding 'human sacrifices' (ala John and Ken) so that maybe, just maybe the other politicians will learn that they and their bureaucrat buddies exist to serve us, and not the other way around. In this case, north county's own Supervisor, Bill Horn, one of the five that voted for the pension, is up for election in June 2010. Sounds like a perfect politician to make an example of... any thoughts?