These reports, the most recent available, were released in July 2019, well before COVID-19 burst the global investment bubble. For Fullerton, this is documented in the CalPERS actuarial reports for the city’s miscellaneous and safety employees. And while tax revenue falls across the state, pension costs continue to rise. The pandemic shutdown is entering its eighth month with no end in sight. At first glance that appears to be overkill, but first glances can be deceptive.įor starters, nobody knows how far revenue will drop. The city expects to raise $25 million per year through this tax. To cope with a projected $7.9 million deficit, the Fullerton City Council has approved a 1.25 cent sales tax increase, which voters will either approve or reject this November. According to Transparent California, 146 Fullerton employees made over $200,000 in pay and benefits in 2019, nearly every one of them were either police or firefighters. In 2019 the average fire captain in Fullerton collected a pay and benefits package that cost the city $224,000 the average fire engineer, $186,000. In Fullerton, 70 percent of the general fund budget is allocated towards public safety – the police and fire departments.
Union negotiated work rules, pay scales, and pension benefits are one of the primary reasons California’s cities and counties are in financial trouble.
But as part of a coordinated effort to contain Placentia’s new model -a dangerous threat to union power and union benefits – the Fullerton firefighter union put maximum pressure on their City Council to reject a mutual aid agreement with Placentia, despite it being a neighboring city. Placentia’s fire department restructuring was done in careful consultation with experts, and the innovations they’ve come up with are likely to make their fire department more effective at less cost to taxpayers. This June, the political reform website “Friends For Fullerton’s Future” published a report entitled “ Fullerton Fire Would Rather Watch Placentia Burn.” This is part of a longer story, about how earlier this year Placentia took the courageous step of restructuring their fire department, against the wishes of their firefighters union, saving millions in the process. More recently, Fullerton’s firefighters union have demonstrated their political power. Greenhut documents tactics allegedly employed by Fullerton’s police union, including storming City Council meetings, yelling at council members who stood up to them, leveling unsubstantiated charges designed to scare Fullerton residents into electing pro-union candidates, and sending out dozens of hit pieces designed to smear candidates that don’t (or won’t) adhere to police union demands. They were demanding reform in the wake of the death of Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic homeless man fatally beaten by Fullerton officers in July 2011. In a 2012 article entitled “ Fullerton Police Union Intimidates Reform Candidates,” author Steven Greenhut writes about two councilmen at the time, Bruce Whitaker and Travis Kiger, who were victims of this intimidation. Public Sector Union Power is Behind the Push for Higher Taxesįullerton is a city with a long history of public sector union influence on elected officials. And like most California cities, public sector unions exercise inordinate if not absolute power over the city council. Like most California cities, it’s in financial trouble these days, if it wasn’t already. At the same time, the public sector unions who arguably control these city councils – unions that need all that money to raise their pay and fund their pensions – hire political professionals to wage campaigns to voters that explicitly advocate these tax increases.Īn example of this, and there are many, is the City of Fullerton. When they decide to put tax increases on the ballot, city councils use public funds to hire expensive consulting firms to help them engage in “communications” with voters. To make perfectly clear what’s really happening here, the communications are only one side of the coin. It’s against the law for public agencies to engage in “advocacy.” The people running these agencies who want to raise your taxes may only spend public funds in order to “communicate” with you about their proposals. Did you know your taxes are being used to advocate for more taxes? Well, not exactly.
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