Let’s get very real. No workers are ever going to accept layoffs, regardless of any management sacrifices. I agree, management should not get raises.

Does anyone really have a full list of the positions that will be cut? I would be curious to verify that there are no management positions being cut.

I would also like to see benchmarks for all positions in the County, both management and line staff. No position should be exempt.

The Supervisors are elected and are responsible to the public, not the unions. The candidate backed by the unions in the First District did not even place in the top two in the last special election.

I want the Supervisors, executives, and management to lead. I don’t need to see them sacrifice. I need to see them make the tough decisions and have a vision. This is not an employment agency.

In reality it was a paper shuffling of employees with no real increase in responsibility. I don’t know if the Supes are complicit, but if it is going on under their noses then they are incompetent and irresponsible.

A simple org chart comparison would reveal of this.

Chopping at the top might only generate a small part of the savings needed to balance the budget. But they will generate an acceptance by most employees of the need to cut back in these tough economic times .And a signal to the voters and taxpayers that all County workers will have to sacrafice. But for now it appears to the voters and taxpayers that the 5th floors response to employees reasonable proposals to cut costs is ” let them eat cake.”

Yes, they did.

Yes, true. All the wasteful spending, whether it’s a few dollars or a few thousand will have to be added together to spend within the budget. We can’t look at the bucket’s drops and say each is too small to make a difference to the whole budget.

More importantly, no one should be lying about the reasons for spending any of the budget money. Transparency should be the rule, especially in tight times. If John Moorlach is feeling vulnerable because of a death threat, perhaps there’s some valid reasoning there for some upgrading security. He shouldn’t have lied about the remodeling project.

No single project elimination will solve the financial holes in the budget. But just to clarify, the cost of the remodel cost amounts to about four jobs for one year. The last raises approved by the board were either the 12% for Tom Mauk or it was the management increase of 5%.

As far as the matter of the pension benefits go, all non-management employees pay the full employee share of their pension benefit. As verified by the county’s Internal Audit report all employees pay the full cost of the increased benefit granted in 2004. For that benefit, in addition to paying the full cost, workers also gave up salary increases for two years and increased their share of medical benefit costs.

Moorlach complains that he has to pay for the increased retirement benefit on the one hand, while failing to mention the fact that he previously never paid anything into his pension and gets an additional 9% contributed by the taxpayers into his 401k plan.

OCEA has not, and from what I can tell does not, dispute the need for cuts. They are only asking that wasteful spending be curtailed before people loose their jobs, and that management, particularly executive management who are making all the decisions about where to cut, share in that pain.

We have yet to see Tom Mauk come out and say that because of this budget crisis, he will reduce his compensation. We have not seen any announcement that any of the Executive Managers are getting laid off or reduced in pay or position.

From what I can tell, there is no willingness to “Chop at the Top” on the part of the board or Executive Management. The lobby remodel, is just one very tangible example of that reality. When they opened the project for bid, under the cover of a consent item on the Board agenda in September, they were already painfully aware of the looming crisis. In November when they approved the project under the cover of a consent item on the Board agenda, the crisis was upon them and they still went forward anyway.

More than 100 Social Services workers will get notified of layoff on Monday. They are being required to ante up; what about Moorlach, Mauk, and executive management?

When was the last raise approved by the Board and for whom? What about the last benefit increase? Did OCEA forgo any salary adjustments last year given the coming problems?

What about Mr. Moorlach’s idea of reducing future pension benefits? Many of us in the private sector have already lost them and most recently many companies are halting matching contributions. Let’s start talking about some real dollar savings that are already accepted in the private sector.

It is time for everyone to ante up…

I have never agrured that there is no need for cuts. I agree that government should live within it’s budget. The remodel, while budgeted under of the capital projects budget for the County, was no longer funded due to the shortfall in county revenue.

The remodel of the fifth floor lobby, is a wasteful project in good times. In bad, it is an example of a board leadership that refuses to live within its means. The Board burried this project in their consent calendar and even deceptively labeled it as a project needed to correct a fire code violation.

The only red herring here is Moorlach claiming the remodel was necessary to correct a violation to deflect attention from a needlessly extravagent waste of taxpayer funds.

Cutting these perks should be the Step 1 in eliminating government waste. This issue also lets the Supervisors know that they are not above scrutiny.

If this were the model for the County from Top to Bottom, then “some” jobs could be saved.

I have been reading blogs from “fiscal conservatives”, who despise government waste, that blast OCEA for bringing up this issue. Shouldn’t they be on the side with eliminating governmental waste or is it a childish game of rivalry against labor associations that will not allow them to agree with OCEA?

Even before the current financial crisis were cutting programs like, the Shelter for Battered Women and Children, to prove to their political base how tough they are on cutting wasteful government spending while at the same lining their pockets with raises, financial perks, and office/break room remodels.

It is all shows a mind set of the Supervisors that governmental waste at their level is OK.

Speaking of symbolic…why did the Supervisor hire a legal consultant to research the viability of a case against the OC Sheriff Dept? Then, when that consultant reported that the case is weak at best, the Supes decide to use massive amounts of tax payer money to launch a legal attack against OCSD.