PRESIDENT'S NEWSLETTER

September 1, 2010

President’s Comments:

The FDSA has been planning the upcoming FDSA Memorial Golf Tournament being held on Friday, October 8, 2010 at the new Eagle Springs Golf Course. This year will mark the 4^th annual fundraiser tournament for the FDSA. We have built on each year, and I am hopeful this year’s will be as successful as the three prior.

We are always looking for volunteers to help out on the course the day of the event. You do not need to play golf for the event. Your help with logistical things makes a successful tournament for the FDSA. Those who wish to help either contact Tammy or me at the office and get your name down. If you are working, as for the time off, I will cover your time with FDSA time so you do not have to burn your annual leave.

FDSA has entered into formal contract negotiations with the County of Fresno. We received replies to our request for what you, as the members, would like to have included in the bargaining. As these talks progress I will update all of you either monthly or if something significant occurs.

There has been a nasty rumor going around the department and the county that the Sheriff’s Department is already 3 million dollars in the red and deputies are going to be laid off. I want to squash that rumor right now, and those of you reading this should do the same. I have confirmed through our business manager and through the CAO with the County that this rumor is false. Please do not believe everything you hear. Those of you who did hear that and called to ask me, I really appreciate it. That rumor was news to me as well.

At the FDSA, we have made another progression on the business end of our organization. We now accept all major credit cards for merchandise, food, alcohol from the bar or whatever else we decide to sell! I believe this will increase sales of the above mentioned items and enter ourselves into the modern age of accepting plastic for payment. We are testing a machine from our bank, and I will update you all in the coming months as to how this has worked out for us.

Stay Safe!!

-Eric

LOCAL ISSUES

Sheriff’s Budget

The County of Fresno has asked the FDSA to draft a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger and five other members of our delegation in Sacramento to put some pressure on the elected state officials and give the County of Fresno a break on the Prop 42 gas tax.

The County did not budget $5.5 million in their 09/10 budget to cover a repayment to the gas tax. (This maintenance of effort payment ends in FY 10/11). There was some speculation the county “may” be on the hook for this repayment as the last part of the program MOE under Prop 42. I have attached a copy of the letter for you all to view. This was sent to the Governor, Assemblymen Villines, Gilmore, Arambula and Senators Cogdill and Florez. The County’s Sacramento lobbyist Paul Yoder also received a copy to push it with the finance committee.

I made contact with PORAC President Ron Cottingham and made sure our PORAC lobbyists, Aaron Reed and Randy Perry were made aware of it. They have started working on it for FDSA and the county to get some resolution. PORAC has a very good relationship with John Chiang, Controller for the State. See the copy of the letter below.

On behalf of the Fresno Deputy Sheriff’s Association, we actively monitor financial issues that may adversely affect Fresno County. In this time of severe economic hardship, the issue of Fresno County’s Fiscal Year 2009-2010 Maintenance of Effort (MOE) payment for Proposition 42 is of great concern.

For Fiscal Year 2009-2010, Fresno County experienced many adverse economic conditions and fiscal budget pressures such as the multi-year drought which forced higher than statewide average unemployment rates and the reduction of revenue streams. These downturns caused the Fresno County Sheriff to reduce jail costs by early releasing inmates and eliminated 121 positions to stay within her Fiscal Year 2009-2010 budget.

Fresno County recently adopted their Fiscal Year 2010-2011 budget. As you know, all revenues streams are down, including the dedicated public safety sales tax revenue (Proposition 172) which was a budget reduction of 4.86% year over year. The Sheriff’s Department received a 7.9% (or $6,577,962) reduction in County discretionary funds which necessitated the reduction of 36 positions, of which 24 were safety positions. The number of jail beds has been reduced from 3,254 at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2009-2010 to 1,923 beds for Fiscal Year 2010-2011.

If a Fiscal Year 2009-2010 MOE continues to be required of Fresno County, the County will be required to take additional discretionary dollars from the Sheriff’s Department. These additional cuts will result in layoffs of Deputy Sheriffs and reduced services to the most vulnerable persons serviced by Fresno County. This result will adversely affect public safety and further the release of inmates and closing of jail floors unless state law regarding this MOE is changed to help.

We urge our legislative representatives to assist Fresno County regarding the Maintenance of Effort payment.

OPD Union Makes Concessions To Avoid More Layoffs

OAKLAND (BCN) ―

Members of Oakland's police union have voted by an "overwhelming" margin to contribute more money to their retirement plan in return for a promise by city officials that no more officers will be laid off, union President Dom Arotzarena said Monday.

However, Arotzarena emphasized that the officers' concessions and the city's no-layoff promise depend on the passage of a controversial parcel tax on the November ballot that calls for property owners to pay $360 a year for four years so the city can hire more officers.

The leadership of the Oakland Police Officers Association agreed to the concessions two weeks ago, just before the City Council voted by a 5-3 margin to place the parcel tax on the ballot, but the union's membership needed to approve them.

If the membership hadn't approved the concessions, the City Council would have taken the measure off the ballot.

The parcel tax, which is expected to raise $53 million a year, needs a two-thirds majority to pass.

Arotzarena declined to provide his membership's vote totals.

Police officers are the only city of Oakland employees who don't contribute to the cost of their retirements. Other employees contribute 9 percent of that cost.

Arotzarena said the union had already provided $34 million in concessions last year when it agreed to contribute 2 percent of their retirement costs starting Jan. 1, 2013.

He said the union has now agreed to contribute 4 percent in 2011 and 3 percent in 2012, so officers will be contributing 9 percent in 2013.

Oakland was authorized by a 2004 ballot measure called Measure Y to have 803 officers, but layoffs and attrition have left it with only 687 officers, police spokesman Jeff Thomason said Monday.

One of the biggest hits was the City Council's vote in June to lay off 80 officers to help the city close its large budget gap.

Arotzarena said that if the parcel tax is approved, those 80 officers would be rehired and the city would avoid having to lay off another 122 officers, an action the city has threatened if its fiscal situation doesn't improve.

But he said if the parcel tax loses the city might be left with only 574 officers by the end of the year.

Arotzarena said that in return for being promised that there won't be any layoffs, the police union "is willing to educate the voters about what it means to have enough officers to protect their safety."

The parcel tax is but one of four tax measures that Oakland residents will vote on in November.

The second biggest is an Oakland Unified School District parcel tax that asks property owners to pay $195 a year to generate $20 million annually to increase teachers' salaries.

San Jose rejects firefighters union contract proposal

By Tracy Seipel

tseipel@mercurynews.com

Posted: 08/04/2010 09:57:15 PM PDT

Updated: 08/04/2010 09:57:16 PM PDT

San Jose city officials on Wednesday formally rejected the latest contract proposal from San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230, which claims its offer would save the city at least $5.3 million.

But in a six-page letter to union President Randy Sekany issued the same day, the City Council asked the union to allow its membership to vote on an 8.91 percent reduction in total compensation that the city says would restore one firetruck and four fire engines, and allow the city to hire back the 49 firefighters who were laid off last week.

"We are supremely disappointed," Sekany said of the city's offer. "It looks like this is politics over public safety."

On Sunday, the union proposed a package of concessions that includes some items that had previously been introduced, such as a 5.25 percent take-home pay reduction and increased health-care co-pays for office visits and prescription drugs.

But the union said it is now willing to adopt a two-tier retirement system for new hires, which could include reducing benefits by 10 percent, changing the vesting time, increasing employee contributions and raising the retirement age. Some veteran firefighters can now retire at 90 percent of their pay.

Alex Gurza, employee relations manager for the city, said that while he appreciated the proposal, it is still more than $6 million short of the concessions needed. "I think we are equally disappointed," Gurza said.

FUNDRAISING

FDSA BBQ

This month’s BBQ we went back to tri-tip and cooked it a little differently this time, which was a complete success based on the amount of compliments given to the meat this month. We sliced as we went, which allowed for whole tri-tips that were not used to be sold at a much reduced price to the membership. Overall another successful BBQ put on by the FDSA.

Just another reminder we are now accepting credit cards for events like this. So those of you who are used to paying with that, the convenience of using your check card/credit card is always easier than having exact change on hand, or worry about writing a check. Just something to think about when buying lunch!

FDSA Building

There were numerous events during the month of July at the FDSA Building. We hosted the Operation Trident end of operation party. This event was a BBQ with the bar opened. Agencies and law enforcement officers from throughout the nation were in attendance. Very good event for the FDSA and really showcased our building and the Association as a class act in Fresno County.

Remember as a member of the FDSA, your rental fee for the building is only $250 and NO bartender fee. Your board of directors has brought that fee down from $500 and a bartender fee of $120. This rate is even negotiable depending on a couple services the member can guarantee. FDSA is committed to making this building as user friendly as possible for its members. Thank you.

We have begun work on a Memorial Wall at the FDSA to honor those 11 deputy Sheriffs who have paid the ultimate sacrifice during the line of duty. I will give you more updates as we progress on this monumental project.

FDSA APPAREL/ITEMS FOR SALE

The FDSA has also started selling “FDSA,” type apparel to our membership. The display case is on the second floor of the FDSA building, with the price list there as well. Tammy

is going to be the person who will be selling you the apparel. All checks will be made out to “FDSA.” I will list below some of the items and the prices attached to them.

Photos for all are now located on the FDSA website, www.fresnodsa.org. Please take a look. Credit card now accepted.

FDSA Polo Shirt	FDSA T-shirt S-XXL	Black compression shirts Tight fight and loose fit	4 different styles of flex-fit hats
$25.00	$15.00 each	$20.00 each	$18.00 each

Aprons	Challenge Coins	FDSA Mugs	Air Support Unit Patch
$18.00 each	$5.00	$10.00	$8.00

LABOR FRONT/BENEFITS

Labor Beat

that may be of some interest to you. I mis quoted last month and told everyone it is a monthly newsletter. I will update this in a couple months from now when the new issue is put out.

Health Care

Public sector workers paying more of their health care costs

By Bobby Caina Calvan
bcalvan@sacbee.com

Workers in private industry have felt the sting of rising health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for decades. Now, as government budgets bleed, public employees are starting to share the pain.

In the past year, Sacramento's largest school districts have trimmed health care coverage. Local and state government officials also are looking for ways to save.

And while public employee unions have made preserving health benefits a priority, they have been pressed to give ground or face more layoffs.

"We can't afford to continue to pay double-digit inflation on health care costs," said Steven Ladd, superintendent of the Elk Grove Unified School District. "We must manage this because it's a huge portion of our expenditures."

Last year, the district spent $57 million on health coverage for its employees – more than twice the $28 million it cost five years ago.

To help save jobs, Elk Grove Unified's key unions this year agreed to double employee co-pays for prescriptions and doctors visits. The concessions will save the district millions of dollars and help its classrooms "get through these very dark fiscal times," Ladd said.

At the Sacramento City Unified School District, teachers last month agreed to a pay cut and trims in health benefits. The union initially refused to negotiate, but the district threatened to lay off 238 teachers, counselors and other employees.

Under the new agreement, SCUSD teachers enrolled in a Kaiser Permanente health plan will see their co-pay rise from $1 per visit to $5. The district also has put in place a tiered prescription drug plan through its other insurer, Health Net. Teachers were paying a $5 co-pay for all drugs, but will now have to pay as much as $35 for some prescriptions.

The district still pays the entire $1,600 to $1,800 monthly premium for teachers. Officials expect to spend $50 million this year – or about 12 percent of the district's general fund budget – to provide medical benefits.

Other branches of government also are looking for savings. State employees now qualify for free health insurance in retirement after 20 years of service. The state is trying to get unions to extend the threshold for lifetime benefits to the 25-year mark.

The International Union of Operating Engineers was the first bargaining unit to agree to the concession, which takes effect for employees hired after next January.

In his proposed budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeking to cut $152.8 million in health premium expenses by requiring the California Public Employees' Retirement System to offer lower-cost coverage, possibly with fewer benefits, or give the state authority to do so.

Health insurance costs have "reached the point where we can't sustain those benefits," said Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Personnel Administration. She described the state plan as a "Cadillac model of health care."

Last month, CalPERS announced that health premiums will rise by an average of 9 percent next year for 1.3 million state and local government workers, retirees and their families. How much of that might be passed on to workers is subject to negotiations.

Local 1000 of the Service Employees International Union, whose 95,000 members are about half of all unionized state workers, is negotiating a new contract. Neither side would discuss bargaining details. But Jim Zamora, a spokesman for the local, doesn't expect health care benefits to be a sticking point. The union, he said, is more focused on the governor's move to cut salaries to minimum wage.

Nevertheless, health benefits have been an issue during bargaining with other unions. California Highway Patrol officers, state physicians and operating engineers have given the state authority to deduct a portion of their salaries, beginning July 2012, to prefund health premiums in their retirement.

Local governments, too, are scaling back. Sacramento County, which has cut more than 1,400 jobs over the past two years, has been looking for places to shave costs.

"What we're seeing is similar to what's happening in the private sector," said Steve Keil, Sacramento County's labor relations director.

Three years ago, Sacramento County workers began paying 20 percent of the premiums for the basic HMO plan – a benefit they previously received for free. Keil said unions should expect more demands for cost sharing.

Sacramento city employees who waive coverage and get their health care through a spouse used to get an allowance of as much as $435 a month. Five years ago that allowance was cut to $200.

Still, the cost of the least expensive health plan offered to city workers rose by 13 percent in the past two years – from $460 monthly in 2008 to the current $520, with about a third of the cost taken from employees' paychecks, said Kimberly Isaacs, the city's benefits manager.

The $60 difference is hardly trivial. If multiplied by the city's 4,500 employees, it adds up to $3.2 million – enough to pay the salaries of about 32 police officers.

Every time premiums go up, city employees have to pay more, Isaacs said. "We've also had to contribute more and more. I have no control over the cost of health care."

Pension Update

CalPERS launching review of high salaried officials

NEW YORK | Wed Aug 4, 2010 10:13pm EDT

NEW YORK Aug 4 (Reuters) - The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) said on Wednesday it was launching a comprehensive review of high pay for public officials, after a public outcry over an official's salary in Los Angeles County.

The scandal erupted last month over reports that Bell, a city of 37,000 in Los Angeles County, had been paying its city manager $787,637 a year, or nearly twice U.S. President Barack Obama's salary, along with a pension that could top $30 million if he lives to age 83.

CalPERS said in a statement that it was reviewing its members who earn more than $400,000 annually in salary and has started to draft new regulations to increase transparency of public agency salaries.

The group also said it was joining California's attorney general in an investigation into the salaries and other compensation of Bell officials and was conducting its own review of Bell.

It is also putting the retirement accounts of individuals under investigation on hold and committing not to approve any pensions until it is satisfied that they are appropriate under the law. (Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Sacramento Sheriff's Department retirement deal goes to union, supervisors

By Robert Lewis
rlewis@sacbee.com

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

Union officials were counting votes through the night on a deal expected to save 85 Sacramento County Sheriff's Department jobs this year.

If members of the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriff's Association ratified the deal – as expected – the Board of Supervisors will vote as early as today on the changes, which include a plan to boost law enforcement managers' pensions in an effort to encourage early retirements.

The county's own retirement system has raised questions about the legality of the county's approach – specifically compliance with a law to ensure due diligence and transparency.

Local governments are required to have an actuary study the long-term costs of any pension benefit increases and to release the results of such a study at a public meeting two weeks before approving the changes.

The county, however, didn't publicly release an actuarial analysis until 5:30 p.m. Monday.

"We just urged caution in considering this. It arguably is a situation that required an actuarial study be conducted under the law," said Richard Stensrud, the Sacramento County Employees' Retirement System's chief executive officer.

Stensrud was careful to say SCERS officials haven't taken a formal position on whether the county is breaking the law. SCERS, which contacted the county with its concerns two weeks ago, simply wanted the county to consider the issue, Stensrud said.

The county, however, has taken a somewhat nuanced approach to the question, arguing that the changes don't fall under that section of the law.

The issue surrounds a proposal to allow members of the Law Enforcement Managers' Association who agree to retire in the next month to cash out up to 200 hours of unused vacation time and count the money toward their final salary for the purpose of calculating their pension. This would essentially boost some managers' pensions by about 5.7 percent a year. The county expects as many as 20 managers – including 14 from the Sheriff's Department – would take the deal.

County Counsel Robert Ryan said the changes represent a compensation change and not a retirement benefit change, which is why the county didn't need to release the actuary's findings sooner. The county isn't changing the pension calculation; it would be changing the employees' final compensation, he added.

"SCERS' interpretation appears to be based on the reasoning that such a payment increases retirement payments so therefore is a retirement benefit. However, this reasoning would transform any Board action to increase employee compensation as a retirement benefit which would be subject to the requirements" of an actuarial analysis, Ryan wrote in an e-mail to The Bee.

In the county, 61 law enforcement managers would be eligible to take the early retirement incentive.

The Segal Company performed an actuarial analysis to estimate what the costs would be under several different scenarios. If all 61 managers took the incentive and cashed out the full 200 hours of time, it would add about $13 million in unfunded liability to the retirement system, according to the analysis. If half as many took the incentive, it would add $9.3 million in unfunded liability.

Interim County Executive Steve Szalay said the cost would likely be less. Only 20 managers with an average of 120 hours of vacation time to cash out will likely take the incentive, Szalay said. That could bring the cost down to around $6 million, he said Monday evening.

While there will be a cost for the incentive, another part of the plan could save significantly more, Szalay has said. The plan on the table would raise the retirement age for new Sheriff's Department hires.

Deputies can currently retire at 50 and get a pension based on the average of their three highest years of compensation multiplied by their years of service. New hires wouldn't be eligible to retire with 3 percent until they turn 55. The pension formula for non-sworn personnel covered by the deputies' union would go from 2 percent at 55.5 to 2 percent at age 60.

It's unclear when the changes would take effect. Because of complex pension rules, the county would need all public safety unions – including those representing probation – to agree to create a new pension tier. Otherwise, it would have to push for enabling state legislation, which could take up to a year.

There is no actuarial analysis of this plan, but Szalay projected that such a change could save more than $100 million over the next 25 years.

The plan also calls for deputies to begin paying more into the retirement system. Deputies currently pay around 6 percent of their salary to the system. That would go to about 9 or 10 percent this year and top off at almost 13 percent next year.

To help offset the cost, the proposal includes a 3.8 percent raise for sworn officers. On top of an expected cost-of-living raise for next year, that could bring their 2011-12 raise to between 5.8 percent and 8.8 percent.

The plan also includes an early retirement incentive for senior deputies. Up to 40 members of the deputy sheriff's association who agree to retire now would be eligible to cash out up to half their unused sick leave, up to 1,000 hours.

Officials say the early retirement incentives for both managers and deputies are fully funded: The $1.2 million price tag of payouts to deputies will be offset by a $234,000 savings in unemployment insurance costs – money the county won't need to pay if people leave willingly as opposed to through layoffs – and a $982,150 savings from suspending the county's contribution into the Retiree Health Savings Program for a year.

The cost of the increased pensions for managers has been funded largely through increased contributions managers and the county have been making for years, officials said. Savings from keeping the positions vacant and from not paying into unemployment insurance also will help, they said.

Under the proposal, Sheriff John McGinness would be able to rely on retired deputies and other on-call staff to fill staffing holes. McGinness has often argued that such workers are cheaper because the county doesn't pay them benefits.

The plan has drawn the protest of taxpayer groups and the District Attorney Jan Scully. Some advocates have railed against the idea of higher pensions for top officials.

Scully has balked at the county's guarantee of no Sheriff's Department layoffs should the plan pass. The county shouldn't make such a promise until it knows what impact the state budget will have on the county, she said.

County officials say the proposal would save $3.72 million this year, including $2.9 million for the general fund, and would save another $2 million next year, including $1.56 million for the general fund.

California pension reform effort loses support

Page 1 of 2

By Catherine Saillant, Los Angeles Times

Story posted 2010.08.18 at 05:25 AM PDT

Legislation intended to curb pension spiking has become so watered down that it would now do little to prevent California public employees from boosting their end-of-career paychecks, critics say, prompting reform advocates and bill sponsor state Controller John Chiang to withdraw support.

Assembly Bill 1987 had been touted as an end to the pension boosting that occurs when public employees add unused vacation, sick time and other benefits to their final year's compensation in order to drive up pensions.

But as debate over public pensions flares in the wake of reports of inflated salaries and pensions in scandal-plagued Bell, reform advocates say that union-backed amendments to the bill have neutered its beneficial effects.

"It allows unions to negotiate what items of pay will be included in final compensation," said Marcia Fritz of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility. "We should be taking away the candy, not adding more."

Pensions are set with a formula that takes into account age, years of service and final year's pay. Police and firefighters, for instance, earn 3% of pay for every year worked. So an officer with a 25-year career would be entitled to 75% of his or her pay for life.

But many municipalities allow retirees to tack extra pay categories on to their final-year salary, pushing their pensions higher, and abuses have cropped up throughout the state.

In Contra Costa County, for instance, a retired fire chief earning $223,000 a year was able to draw a $284,000 pension by tacking leave benefits on to his final year's pay.

Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D- San Francisco), the bill's author, said the legislation targets highly paid employees who are not part of a bargaining unit. Most spiking abuses have occurred in top management, not among rank-and-file workers, she said.

After conferring with unions and other stakeholders, Ma agreed to amendments that allow unions to negotiate whether such things as education incentives, uniform allowances and shift differentials can be used to come up with a final pay figure, she said. Those items have been upheld as part of final compensation in court and attempting to change that interpretation could invite costly litigation for cities and counties, Ma contends.

"Right now, there are no laws regulating nonrepresented employees at all," she said.

It's not just pension reformers calling for changes in the legislation. The California State Assn. of Counties, a local government lobbying group, has withdrawn support along with Chiang, the state controller.

Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper said the controller, who is running for reelection in November, would seek changes that ensure the legislation clamps down on all pension spiking practices.

"He's working with Ma right now to achieve that goal," Roper said.

An official in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office said the governor would not sign the amended legislation. As written, it "fails to truly address the problem of pension spiking," said spokeswoman Andrea McCarthy.

Schwarzenegger is calling for major reforms to address $500 billion in unfunded pension debt in California, including lower benefits for new employees and increased contributions for employees.

His administration has negotiated contracts with six state unions that, if ratified, will adopt elements of reform. Ma's legislation takes aim at the 30 or so retirement systems — including Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties — that are not a part of pension fund giant CalPERS.

A companion bill, SB 1425, implements anti-spiking provisions for members of CalPERS and CalSTRS, the public teachers' retirement plan.

When it was introduced in February, AB 1987 banned the practice of adding unused sick time, accumulated vacation days and other pay categories to the final year's salary to boost pensions.

The Assembly bill also contained provisions to prevent a final-year boost in salary and to stop public employees from "double-dipping" by mandating that they could not return to a public agency until retired for at least six months.

In its current form, the prohibition on final-year salary spike and the six-month wait is still in place. But employees are permitted to add a year's leave to their final-pay calculation and union members also can add pay items that have been approved in court decisions.

Terry Brennand, a spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, one of the state's largest bargaining units, said that if cities and counties want to ban so-called "special compensation" such as shift differentials, bilingual pay and uniform allowances, they have to consult with workers.

This is the agreement they came to," Brennand said. "Now they want to go back and take it away without going to the bargaining table."

Past efforts to reform pension spiking have produced loopholes, as was shown in the Bell salary scandal. Although CalPERS adopted its own rules to limit end-of-career salary hikes in 1994, former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo was able to boost his salary 47% in one year, resulting in a much higher pension.

CalPERS knew of the hike but gave the OK after a deputy city manager showed that several other managers and the elected council members were getting similar increases.

PORAC

These are minutes from the Central Cal Chapter Meetings that fall on the 3rd Tuesday of each month. Any other significant events that may occur with PORAC will also be listed under this heading as well.

v Local Chapter was dark in the Month of July. Our next meeting will be held on August 17, 2010 in the City of Hanford, Hanford POA hosting.

State Issues

I have added this heading into my monthly President’s Report to just keep everyone apprised of what is going on around the state. Here are a few items that may be of some interest to our members. I breeze through the different media channels daily to see what is going on in the northern and southern regions of the state. Here are just a few things that are happening around the state that may have an affect here locally.

I found this as a pretty interesting article when reading. Wanted to pass it on to all of you.

Cops, Crime, and the Economy

August 16, 2010 - by Jack Dunphy

Economic recovery on a local scale, whether in Los Angeles, Oakland, or St. Louis, is largely dependent on the willingness of citizens to live and spend money there.

Some time ago I was on patrol in a part of Los Angeles known then as now for its high level of crime. A woman driving through the neighborhood stopped me and posed some questions. She had been living in one of L.A.’s far-off suburbs, and she was contemplating a move into town where she would be closer to her job. In some ways the neighborhood would have been ideal for her. It was affordable, for one thing, and it offered handy freeway access for getting to her workplace downtown. Even when L.A. traffic is at its worst, which is to say most mornings and afternoons, she would have saved two hours on the road each day if she had moved from her current home in the suburbs.

Then came the snag: “How’s the crime around here?” she asked.

I confess to experiencing a fleeting temptation to equivocate. The woman, if I can render a judgment based on that most cursory of meetings, struck me as someone who would enhance the surroundings. She seemed educated and pleasant, she was well dressed, and the car she drove reflected, if not prosperity, a certain pride of ownership. She was in short the kind of person almost anyone would want to see moving in on the block, and the kind of customer any merchant would welcome. And as a police officer in the area, I reasoned that this woman’s home would be one less whose occupants would add to the neighborhood’s ills and my own workload.

But I could not lie to her. The answer to her question about neighborhood crime was anything but an inducement to settle there. There had been, I told her, a gang-related murder only two days before, just a few blocks from where we were standing. Burglaries and street robberies were common in the surrounding area, and the nearby major thoroughfare, on which she would have to drive on her way to and from the freeway, was well known for the prostitutes who did a roaring trade at all hours of the day and night, a trade which often involved servicing customers in cars parked on the adjacent side streets, making for the occasional unpleasant surprise for adults and unwelcome educational experience for children.

The woman thanked me for the information, and I wished her luck in her search for a new home, which I was certain would not be in that particular neighborhood.

Despite compelling evidence to the contrary, outlined earlier this year by Heather Mac Donald in the Wall Street Journal, the notion that poverty causes crime is a myth that stubbornly refuses to slip into the grave it has long deserved. But in attacking that myth, Mac Donald concluded her column on a note of caution:

The recession could still affect crime rates if cities cut their police forces and states start releasing prisoners early. Both forms of cost-saving would be self-defeating. Public safety is the precondition for thriving urban life. In 1990s New York, crime did not drop because the economy improved; rather, the city’s economy revived because crime was cut in half. Keeping crime rates low now is the best guarantee that cities across the country will be able to exploit the inevitable economic recovery when it comes.

I will leave it to others to determine if an economic recovery is underway, but today, only seven months after writing the article, Mac Donald seems to have been eerily prescient. Here in California, prisoners are indeed being released early, though in Los Angeles the ill effects have yet to be manifested. Crime in the city continues to fall, though perhaps not at the rates experienced in recent years. And the Los Angeles Police Department, which had been expanding for several years until the recession hit, is hiring new officers at a pace that at best keeps up with normal attrition. But funds for police overtime have been all but eliminated, forcing the department to compensate officers with time off rather than money, the net effect of which is a seven- to ten-percent reduction in the number of officers deployed on any given day.

But the LAPD is in better shape than the police departments in many cities. Last month I wrote about violent crime in Chicago, where financial constraints are merely one factor on a long list of civic woes. Meanwhile, down the I-55 in East St. Louis, Illinois, a city already beset by high crime, almost 30 percent of the police force was recently laid off, a move that was reversed only after officers agreed to a 20-percent pay cut. And even with that concession, the officers may be laid off again if the city’s financial picture doesn’t improve, a contingency few are expecting anytime soon.

And back here in California, another city that can little afford it has laid off a significant number of its police officers. The city of Oakland, on the less glamorous east side of San Francisco Bay, is a textbook exhibit of urban troubles, chief among which is truly frightening rate of violent crime. Yet even in the face of this onslaught, last month the city laid off 80 cops (about ten percent of the department) and announced that officers would no longer to respond to some requests for service.

The woman I described above was just one person, but the choice she would make in deciding where to live and the calculations she made in reaching her decision are repeated countless times each month as people all over the country evaluate their present circumstances and ask themselves if they might be better off somewhere else. Should a shortened commute come at the price of exposing oneself to the everyday nuisance of street prostitution and the occasional but very real threat of violent crime? In its failure to devote sufficient resources to curtail crime in that Los Angeles neighborhood, city leaders have allowed the area to remain hostile to those who, like that woman, would by their very presence improve it.

Economic recovery on a local scale, whether in Los Angeles, Oakland, or East St. Louis, is largely dependent on the willingness of citizens to live and spend money there. Wherever people don’t feel safe, those who are able pick up and go elsewhere. They take their money with them, leaving those remaining just that much poorer.

In Closing

Officer shootings and threats of shootings are on the rise. Just over the past weekend there were several incidents, not only in California, but throughout the nation where officers were gunned down. We can all speculate the reasons why these incidents have occurred. The only true underlying factor is that they are occurring, and we must be on top of our game, both on and off duty, to counter someone who wants to kill us.

Just think in your mind sometime; are you proficient in the tools you carry on your gunbelt, i.e. MEB, OC, Firearm, Taser. Second, have you mentally prepared yourself for that critical incident that could result in life or death? Not a specific incident, because chances of it being what you thought about are very slim. But just how to survive and a simple “Never give up,” mindset.

I will leave you this month with that thought. No matter what assignment you are currently working, just take a moment and think about that. Maybe it will help you out during a situation.

Take Care

-Eric

PRESIDENT'S NEWSLETTER

August 4, 2010

President’s Comments:

I have recently received five thank you letters from throughout the state of California from California Highway Patrol offices where five CHP officers have been killed in the line of duty since May 7^th. Our brother agency has taken a tremendous loss in the past two months. The better term is historical loss. The last time the CHP has lost multiple officers in that amount of time was the Newhall incident in 1970. My heart goes out to them and their officers who are still grieving from the losses of fellow co-workers and friends. This just proves again, in times like this we all have to band together no matter what color the uniform or style of badge.

The department has recently wrapped up Operation Trident which started July 12^th and concluded on July 30^th. The FDSA was involved in this operation by getting the opportunity to sell apparel to the over 300 participants. We also hosted the end of operation barbeque at the FDSA, where more apparel was sold, the bar was extremely profitable. Being a multi agency operation, our banner was hung in the Trident office throughout the operation and many officers from across the state and nation were very impressed with the Sheriff’s Dept and gave several compliments to our deputies and command staff for the hard work put into the operation. United States Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and US Attorney Ben Wagner were both present for the operation on Wednesday July 28 and Thursday July 29^th for a complete tour of the operation and then a stabo ride into a garden above Pine Flat Lake. The folks who give us the money were here to see the first hand operation. Very impressive.

Starting August 12^th we go back to the bargaining table with the county of Fresno. I have sent out a wish list to all of you via email and I hope to start receiving responses back on what you would like to see the FDSA bargaining for at the table, remember both economic and non-economic things are equally important. I look forward to a finished product and will be updating you all as much as I can during the bargaining process. Stay tuned for more.

The FDSA will be taking a strong opposition to Prop 19 (Marijuana legalization in California). I will be sending out a very informative fact sheet to all of you explaining the problems of doing something like this. Both for the public and your safety first and foremost. I am almost finished compiling it and will be distributing it via email to all of you and will post it on our website as well, www.fresnodsa.org.

Stay Safe!!

-Eric

LOCAL ISSUES

Sheriff’s Budget

With the current financial difficulties surrounding the economy over all, I plan on keeping this subheading in the newsletter so all of you are aware of any significant changes that may be occurring within the Sheriff’s budget, so there is some form of communication, even if it is only on a monthly basis.

After wrapping up the current budget on June 22^nd, I continue to follow what is going on throughout the State of California and nation regarding other law enforcement budgets and where everyone stands currently. I have included two articles regarding the situation that occurred in the City of Oakland at the beginning of July. I am just making everyone aware of how real these law enforcement budgets are becoming. Remember it was a little over a year ago, March 21, 2009 when Oakland Police Department lost four police officers in one day due to hostile gunfire in the City from a suspect who was a parolee at large.

Negotiations continue as Oakland tries to avoid laying off 80 police officers

By Cecily Burt and Harry Harris
Oakland Tribune

Posted: 07/12/2010 09:59:32 PM PDT

Updated: 07/12/2010 10:58:23 PM PDT

OAKLAND — Officer Derek Souza, 43, finished up his shift at 7 a.m. Saturday and headed for the locker room. He changed his clothes, hung up his service weapon, his Taser and his handcuffs and headed home. The only difference is this time he might not be coming back.

Oakland officials and representatives for the police officers union negotiated all day Monday and into the night but had not yet reached an agreement on concessions that would avoid the layoff of 80 police officers. Although Police Chief Anthony Batts said the layoffs took effect at midnight Monday, the deadline is actually 5 p.m. today, according to the mayor's office. The City Council met in scheduled closed session Monday afternoon to receive an update on the negotiations and will reconvene in closed session this morning.

Both the city and the Oakland Police Officers Association have proposed a two-tiered pension system that has police officers paying 9 percent of their salaries into their pensions, as other city workers do, saving $8 million. As of Friday, the negotiations had faltered because the police association wanted guarantees that no officers hired before March 21, 2009, the day four Oakland police officers were fatally shot by a parolee, would be laid off for three years. The cash-strapped city said it could not guarantee such a deal.

The Oakland City Council voted June 24 to lay off 80 officers from the 776-officer force to help balance the budget and close a $31 million deficit. The city also is counting on voters to approve a new tax measures and amend an existing 2004 tax ordinance. If the November measures fail, the police force could lose another 122 officers in January.

Batts said again Monday that the department would no longer be able to respond in person to calls for service that are not considered immediate, life-threatening emergencies. Also, 57 problem-solving officers and six sergeants that were the heart of the city's community policing efforts would be history, he said.

Batts said he came to Oakland to "build the organization," not downsize it. The department had become more efficient and more professional in recent months, and the chief said he would do what he could to continue that trend, despite the deep cuts to his force.

Batts said the loss of 80 officers was a blow, and he regretted that recent events shifted the department's focus from them.

"When you lay off employees, the organization should wrap its arms around (them) because they've done everything we've asked them to do," he said. "It's not a discipline issue; they've done their job, stood tall. But my time was full trying to prepare for this, so it's pretty tough."

In addition to the layoffs, 27 of the 30 walking patrol officers who have become familiar faces in many of the city's commercial districts, such as Lakeshore, Temescal and Laurel, will be reassigned to patrol duty.

Pamela Drake, director of the Lakeshore Business Improvement District, said Lakeshore's foot patrol officer is important not only as a deterrent to dangerous crime, but he also helps many in the neighborhood cut through red tape and deal quickly with nuisances or street people that the non-sworn security patrols are not trained or equipped to handle.

Many of the 31 officers who received pink slips had graduated from the police academy Oct. 31, 2008. Souza, who followed in the footsteps of two brothers who are Oakland police officers, was one of them. His entire squad of seven officers is being let go.

Souza is married with four children. They will have medical coverage through his wife's job at a Bay Area school district, but it will cost $500 more per month that they do not have.

"The loss of my job will pretty much devastate my household. I'm only going to be able to survive a short time," he said. "We're in danger of losing our house and my car. It's just a reality."

He said it was a somber scene inside the locker room Saturday. The officers who were packing up kept their heads down, and there were a few tears.

Connie Burch, a 65-year-old retiree who has owned her home in the city's San Antonio neighborhood for 40 years, said she was "madder than a wet hen" about the prospect of losing 80 police officers, and she said she would not vote for any incumbent who let that happen.

She said she knows the city is in a bind, and she and her husband would pay higher taxes to keep services.

Oakland P.D.: Layoffs are official

By S. Howard Bransford

Layoff orders for eighty Oakland police officers went into effect Tuesday evening after labor talks between the city and the police union broke down.

Oakland Police Department spokesperson Holly Joshi said the dreaded terminations became official at 5 p.m. City officials were trying to avoid the layoffs by brokering a compromise with the Oakland Police Officer's Association that would have repaired the city's $32 million general fund deficit by cutting police pension benefits.

But by the end of Tuesday, no deal had been reached.

"The order was to stand by until 5 p.m.," Joshi said. "As of 5 p.m. there was no rescinding order. The layoffs have gone through as usual."

Joshi said the job cuts will have a noticeable effect on policing in Oakland, but that residents should not be too anxious.

"Anytime you have layoffs of eighty positions in a police department, it's very difficult," Joshi said. "People shouldn't panic. We're still going to respond to emergency calls and to violent crime in Oakland."

Broke California Cities Target Cop Shops

July 23, 2010 - 9:39 AM | by: Claudia Cowan

Police departments across California are under fire, as cash-strapped local governments scale back public safety spending -- often the single biggest expenditure on their books.

Oakland, where violent crime is up, has cut 80 officers--10% of its department-- to save $14-million annually.
The city of Stockton -- $23-million in the red-- is laying off 26 officers, and prompting concerns by the local police union.

"We're not doing as much follow up police work as far as when we do respond to a call, we don't have the amount of detectives that we used to follow up and investigate these cases and try and get these suspects in custody," says Steve Leonesio, with the Stockton Police Officers Association.

Now, that union is taking its fight to the streets, buying billboard space to send grim, graphic, messages. One sign welcomes visitors to "the second most dangerous city" in the state. Another says the murder rate is up, and keeps a running body count.

"During tough times, you've got to make tough decisions, and we don't think cutting public safety is the right decision that's being made at city hall. So that's why we're doing this," says Leonesio.

Critics charge short-changing law enforcement is the wrong way to make up for years of poor financial decision making.

The Bay Area city of San Carlos believes it's come up with a better solution: it's disbanding its P.D. altogether, and turning law enforcement over to the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. It's a decision the mayor says will maintain the same number of cops, but cut the city's $3.5 million deficit nearly in half.

Ed Rogner, a law enforcement consultant who worked with San Carlos, says numerous police departments have merged with county sheriff's departments in Southern California. He believes that will eventually become a trend in Nor Cal cities, too.

"They're going to have to do something," Rogner says. "They either cut services, or find a more efficient way to deliver them outsourcing. Contracting for police and fire is one way to maintain the service level, while reducing costs."

Rogner adds residents don't care what color the uniform is: their main concern is that when they need help, they'll get it from a a trained law enforcement officer.But many residents say they're not comfortable with such sweeping changes, and police unions argue service and response time will suffer. So, they're taking their case to politicians, and the people. In Stockton, for example, where ten graphic billboards are up now, residents can expect to see half a dozen more throughout the rest of the year.

FDSA BBQ

I want to thank the BBQ crew; Ryan Gilbert, Christina Meza, Tina Ortiz, Joel and Stephanie Cobb, Kelly Mayfield, Isaac Torres and Mike Nulick. This BBQ was a success due to all of you volunteering your time to help out. Thank you again.

We changed the menu this month and tried pulled pork rather than tri-tip. The meal was very good and received many compliments. We will mix it up every now and then to keep some variety going with the buyers of the lunches. Next month we will go back to tri-tip and compare the sales of both pork and tri-tip.

We are just trying to mix it up a little. I know several people thought we are changing for good, but no worries, we will be doing a little variety each and every month to keep you all guessing! Seems like so far we are cooking what most like to eat.

FDSA Building

Remember as a member of the FDSA, you’re rental fee for the building is only $250 and NO bartender fee. Your board of directors has brought that fee down from $500 and a bartender fee of $120. This rate is even negotiable depending on a couple services the member can guarantee. FDSA is committed to making this building as user friendly as possible for its members. Thank you.

FDSA APPAREL/ITEMS FOR SALE

The FDSA has also started selling “FDSA,” type apparel to our membership. The display case is on the second floor of the FDSA building, with the price list there as well. Tammy

is going to be the person who will be selling you the apparel. All checks will be made out to “FDSA.” I will list below some of the items and the prices attached to them.

Photos for all are now located on the FDSA website, www.fresnodsa.org. Please take a look.

FDSA Polo Shirt

$25.00

FDSA t-shirt S-XXL

$15.00 each

Black compression shirts Tight fight and loose fit

$20.00 each

4 different styles of flex-fit hats

$18.00 each

Aprons

$18.00 each

Challenge Coins

$5.00

FDSA Mugs

$10.00

Air Support Unit Patch

$8.00

LABOR FRONT/BENEFITS

Labor Beat

that may be of some interest to you. I mis quoted last month and told everyone it is a monthly newsletter. I will update this in a couple months from now when the new issue is put out.

Health Care

I have started to follow the health care crisis starting to occur in the public sector. We are seeing that here in Fresno County. We have not received an increase in our health care county contributions since the beginning of 2006. The county is tied to a “favored nations,” clause when it comes to health care. What that means is what they give one, they must give to another. So hands are tied when wanting to give something to one group and not to another. This favored nations clause really hurts the FDSA in this area when bargaining with the county.

We have all heard the rumors going around regarding the decrease in county contributions to the health plan we currently have. Let me clear the air as to what has occurred regarding that action.

The county is currently contributing $208.06 to each county employee regardless of what plan you are on. What the CAO did when building the budget is take off $100.00 of that for half of the fiscal year. So starting in January of 2011 through the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2011) there has been a slice out of that 208.06 that would equal $108.06 or $1300.00 per employee for the remainder of the fiscal year starting in January.

This dollar amount equals for the entire Sheriff’s Department, about $1.1 million to help balance the budget. What that is doing, however, is balancing budgets on the backs of employees. The Board of Supervisors approved the cut, Countywide, knowing it would equal around 8 million dollars cost savings when budget building.

Now many have asked me isn’t that bargaining in bad faith? That really isn’t an easy answer, and the county knows their way around it. When at the bargaining table, they can say they are restoring that money, yet they will pull it from somewhere else. Or the Sheriff can tell the board she is going to make up the $1.1 million dollar figure. There is a

variety of ways this can go down. What position will we take at the bargaining table with this? That is yet to be determined. However I will keep all of you in the loop regarding it.

I have attached a recent article from the Sacramento Bee regarding public health benefits and how the media and politicians are trying to portray them to the general public. Pretty interesting, first pensions, now health care costs.

Public sector workers paying more of their health care costs

By Bobby Caina Calvan
bcalvan@sacbee.com

In the past year, Sacramento's largest school districts have trimmed health care coverage. Local and state government officials also are looking for ways to save.

And while public employee unions have made preserving health benefits a priority, they have been pressed to give ground or face more layoffs.

Last year, the district spent $57 million on health coverage for its employees – more than twice the $28 million it cost five years ago.

Under the new agreement, SCUSD teachers enrolled in a Kaiser Permanente health plan will see their co-pay rise from $1 per visit to $5. The district also has put in place a tiered

prescription drug plan through its other insurer, Health Net. Teachers were paying a $5 co-pay for all drugs, but will now have to pay as much as $35 for some prescriptions.

The International Union of Operating Engineers was the first bargaining unit to agree to the concession, which takes effect for employees hired after next January.

Local governments, too, are scaling back. Sacramento County, which has cut more than 1,400 jobs over the past two years, has been looking for places to shave costs.

"What we're seeing is similar to what's happening in the private sector," said Steve Keil, Sacramento County's labor relations director.

Sacramento city employees who waive coverage and get their health care through a spouse used to get an allowance of as much as $435 a month. Five years ago that allowance was cut to $200.

The $60 difference is hardly trivial. If multiplied by the city's 4,500 employees, it adds up to $3.2 million – enough to pay the salaries of about 32 police officers.

Every time premiums go up, city employees have to pay more, Isaacs said. "We've also had to contribute more and more. I have no control over the cost of health care."

Pension Update

As I have been updating you all monthly regarding how the politicians and public are have been criticizing public pensions. Those of you who may not have heard or been following the City of Bell controversy in the last couple weeks, I have attached two articles on the salaries and pensions of City Manager, Assistant City Manager and Police Chief. This city of less that 40,000, is a text book example of the public mis-trust of government and public pensions.

Judge rules public has a right to know about county workers' pensions

By Robert Lewis
rlewis@sacbee.com

Published: Wednesday, Jul. 14, 2010 - 11:55 am

A Sacramento Superior Court judge this week ruled that Sacramento County's retirement system can't keep information about government workers' pensions from the public.

The Sacramento Bee and First Amendment Coalition had sued the Sacramento County Employees' Retirement System for pension information including the names of retirees and how much they're getting.

Rising pension costs have become an increasing burden on cash-strapped local governments and the state. In response officials, advocacy groups and the media statewide have been asking for details on the systems including names of retirees to see the prevalence of such practices as "pension spiking."

The California Public Employees' Retirement System and numerous county retirement systems have already released that information. A list of all retirees drawing more than $100,000 a year from CalPERS, for example, is available online.

Sacramento County's system, however, has steadfastly refused, claiming such records are confidential.

Judge Allen Sumner disagreed and ordered the system to release the information.

"Sacramento County faces difficult budget decisions. Its reduction of critical services has generated significant public debate. The public has a strong interest in knowing how government is spending their money, and a constitutional right to such information," according to the judge's final order.

Karl Olson, the attorney representing The Bee, called the ruling "well-written" and said it "displays great sensitivity to the public's right to know.

"We think it's clearly correct in light of the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling that public employee salaries are public information. Pensions are a huge issue for our cash-strapped state and local governments, and the records at issue here will shed important light on that issue," Olson said

The ruling - which follows similar decisions around the state including in Stanislaus County - will hopefully dissuade other counties from fighting similar requests for transparency, said Peter Scheer, the First Amendment Coalition's executive director.

"This may be the nail that finally closes the coffin on the effort to prevent the public from seeing pension information for county government employees," Scheer said.

Richard Stensrud, chief executive officer of the county's retirement system, said he will recommend the system appeal the decision. Such a move would ultimately be up to the system's board. The board meets Thursday and should discuss its options at that time.

"With all due respect, we disagree with the ruling and we believe it's an erroneous interpretation of the law," Stensrud said.

Scheer said an appeal would just cost the system more money in legal fees. A ruling in a higher court could set a binding precedent, he added.

"If that's his inclination, I'd say bring it on," Scheer said.

3 former Bell administrators won't collect pensions until California clears them

By Marc Lifsher and Jeff Gottlieb

July 29, 2010

LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0729-bell-pension-20100729,0,753028.story

Three highly paid administrators in Bell will not be permitted to draw their state pensions until the state attorney general determines whether the city broke the law in awarding the hefty paychecks.

"CalPERS is concerned about the situation and our intention is to not entertain applications for pensions from any of these people until the investigation is complete," said Pat Macht, external affairs director for the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

The Times reported earlier this month that the city's top officials received some of the highest municipal wages in the nation.

City Manager Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, almost twice the salary of President Obama; Police Chief Randy Adams made $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia made $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.

All three resigned last week in the face of mounting anger in the small working-class city southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

In retirement, Rizzo would become the highest-paid retiree in CalPERS, the state's massive pension system. He would earn more than $600,000 a year for the rest of his life, according to calculations made by The Times and reviewed by pension experts.

Adams, who would receive an estimated $411,000, would be the third-highest-paid.

"CalPERS is working closely with the attorney general on this matter, and not a dollar will be paid until we have the full and complete picture," Macht said.

None of the former administrators has filed paperwork to collect pensions. Though she resigned her position in Bell, Spaccia continues to work as the interim city manager of neighboring Maywood.

On Tuesday, Bell turned over several documents to the state attorney general's office to comply with a subpoena, a spokesman for the office said.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown issued the subpoena Monday, seeking hundreds of salary and employment documents from the city to determine whether top officials broke laws in awarding high salaries. Brown, who is running for governor, also sought e-mails, employment contracts for the city's top three administrators, City Council resolutions related to compensation and minutes from certain council meetings.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office is also investigating Bell officials to determine if there were improper salaries, conflicts of interest or voter fraud.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley also said investigators were looking at whether council members had received pay for meetings they did not attend or meetings that lasted only a few minutes. Until they slashed their pay this week, four of the five council members were receiving nearly $100,000 a year for their part-time work.

Examiner Editorial: Outrageous public pensions drain California

Editorial

July 29, 2010

San Francisco Examiner

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/Examiner-Editorial-Outrageous-public-pensions-drain-California-99505364.html

After the Los Angeles Times reported that the blue-collar suburb of Bell was paying City Manager Robert Rizzo $787,637 a year — with 12 percent annual pay increases — a crowd of indignant residents waited almost eight hours outside the July 22 City Council meeting. At midnight, it was announced that Rizzo, along with police Chief Randy Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, was resigning without severance.

The combined annual salary of these three highest-paid Bell employees was $1,620,925 in a city where one in six live in poverty, property taxes are higher than Beverly Hills and debt held by the city quadrupled between 2004 and 2009. To say the citizens of Bell weren’t getting the management they were paying for would be a gross understatement.

Despite two corruption investigations of the city, taxpayers are still on the hook for Bell’s obscenely overpaid officials. The likely reason why Rizzo, Adams and Spaccia resigned so readily is that they are eligible for public pensions. Under current formulations, Adams will make $411,000 annually in retirement and Spaccia could make as much as $250,000 when she’s eligible for retirement in four years at age 55.

Rizzo, who was arrested in March on charges of driving over his neighbor’s mailbox while registering nearly four times higher than the blood-alcohol legal limit, is set to become the highest paid public official in California’s retiree system. He will collect more than $650,000 annually. Six years from now, when Rizzo turns 62 and starts collecting Social Security, his annual benefit will increase to $976,771. When he turns 64, it will top $1 million. And if he lives to 83, he’ll be pulling in $1.48 million a year. Again, all of this largesse is courtesy of state taxpayers.

California is but one of many states on the brink of fiscal ruin largely due to outrageous public employee benefits. Some 9,111 Californians have six-figure public pensions, as do thousands more public employees in other states. Maybe these retirees won’t get a million a year like Rizzo, but they are, in effect, taxpayer-funded millionaires.

Fortunately, there are signs that taxpayers are fed up with this state of affairs. Last week, the governor of Missouri signed a law requiring new state employees to contribute 4 percent of their pay to their retirement plan. The Show Me State is showing California and the rest of the country a path to public pension reform.

PORAC

These are minutes from the Central Cal Chapter Meetings that fall on the 3^rd Tuesday of each month. Any other significant events that may occur with PORAC will also be listed under this heading as well.

v Local Chapter was dark in the Month of July. Our next meeting will be held on August 17, 2010 in the City of Hanford, Hanford POA hosting.

State Issues

Los Angeles Times

In Maywood, a quiet changing of the guard

At 12:01 a.m. Thursday, the Police Department was disbanded and its duties turned over to the sheriff; day-to-day city operations were taken over by nearby Bell. The transition went smoothly.

By Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb, Los Angeles Times

July 2, 2010http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0702-maywood-20100702,0,5063562,print.story

Instead of bringing six white shirts and six pairs of socks to get him through his work week, Eric Saavedra needed only one of each when he showed up Wednesday for his final shift as a Maywood police officer.

By the time he parked his squad car at the end of the night, he would be one of the last city employees.

"It's really sad knowing that I'll never come back to this place," Saavedra said as he drove through the city's streets. "Last Saturday a man called me over and asked me if his brother's murder case was still going to be investigated. That was really a sad moment. We're worrying about losing our jobs, and [he's] worrying about his brother's murderer."

When the sun came up Thursday, Maywood may have looked remarkably like it had the day before, but in other ways it had changed profoundly. At 12:01 a.m. Thursday, the 86-year-old Police Department was disbanded, most city employees were let go and the day-to-day detail work of running the working-class city southeast of L.A. was handed over to neighboring Bell. In all, nearly 100 city workers had been let go.

Maywood officials said they had no choice because the city could not obtain insurance, the consequence of too many lawsuits in the past, many involving the Police Department, which also patrolled the nearby city of Cudahy. Only the city manager, city attorney and elected officials remain on the payroll.

Despite the changeover, things did not seem much different in the city of about 40,000 people, nearly all of them Latino. The Police Department was immediately replaced by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, four cars at a time on most shifts.

Business at the city's white Art Deco-style City Hall appeared to go on as usual. But no longer were there Maywood employees helping people who gathered at the front desk. Some worked for Bell, which had contracted to take over most municipal tasks.

Others were contractors hired through an agency, some of them former Maywood employees, said Magdalena Prado, Maywood's community relations director, who was also working on a contract. A man with close-cropped hair and wearing a beige "City of Maywood" shirt was helping a woman at the Planning Department counter. Another man was wearing a black Maywood shirt. One employee pointed out Maywood's former planning director, who was standing at the back of the room, still at work.

A big difference for those working on contracts, however, is that they are no longer receiving benefits, including health insurance. Police officers said they were let go without receiving back vacation pay.

Prado said she was trying to get figures on how many people working on city business were contractors, Bell employees or former Maywood employees. She would not allow employees to speak to the media.

A sign at the entrance to City Hall read, "…the City Council has requested that from this date forward, no media will be permitted inside city hall…"

Two women who had been working at the front desk said they were working for a consultant monitoring the changeover. They would not provide the name of the consulting firm

In the locked parking lot next to City Hall, Maywood police cars stood idle, no longer needed. The police station, part of City Hall, was empty. L.A. County Sheriff's Capt. Henry Romero, who stood outside the building, said his department hoped to set up a substation in the old space.

Former Police Chief Frank Hauptmann stood talking to one of his officers, who was wearing a bulletproof vest over his civilian clothes. He hugged the chief before leaving. "Just say this is the best chief we ever had," the former cop said, his voice rich with emotion.

Nearby a white Maywood park maintenance truck was parked. On its side was written, "Committed to our community since 1924."

Those who came to City Hall on business said they noticed little difference. Jose Lopez rode his green bike to City Hall with a pistol tucked in his belt to get a senior bus pass, just as he's always done the first day of every month.

Luis Vargas brought in a bill from the Shell station where police brought their squad cars. He said he was paid as usual.

Several blocks away, Maywood Park's three-year-old gym was crowded with basketball players, people working out and seniors eating lunch. Children in bathing suits waited in line to get into the city pool.

Aldo Perez, a contract employee who serves as director of Parks and Recreation, said he expects no changes. "We're busy as heck," he said.

As Wednesday turned into Thursday, Hauptmann made a final inspection of his officers. As his men stood in line, he walked past them, taking their badges, one by one. Some broke down in tears.

The chief gave Romero portraits of the department's three officers who have been killed in the line of duty since 1924. Hauptmann requested that the Sheriff's Department never remove the portraits.

Shortly after dismissing his officers, Hauptmann picked up the police radio for the last time.

"On behalf of Maywood police employees, this will be our last transmission," he said. "Maywood police will now be 10-7, End of Watch. June 30th the year 2010. God bless all of you."

In Closing

I hope you all are enjoying the information I am putting out in the monthly newsletter. I try to touch on a variety of different issues that will in one way or another affect you as a working person in law enforcement. The trends that are occurring around our state in different jurisdictions are very important when dealing with similar issues on our home front.

I love feedback from the members. Please email, call, or text me with any ideas you may want to see the FDSA doing, or want me discussing in this newsletter. Your idea may be something not thought of by me or your board of directors. Thank You.

Take Care

-Eric

PRESIDENT'S NEWSLETTER

July 7, 2010

President’s Comments:

I have been recently putting out to the entire membership, any California Peace Officer who is killed in the line of duty. This keeps you all in the loop as to any line of duty deaths occurring in the State of California to our fellow officers.

The FDSA is going to be memorializing all of our fallen deputy sheriffs in the upcoming months. We are going to be creating a memorial wall inside of the building to honor those who have been killed in the line of duty working for our department. We will also be keeping a current year log, of all California cops killed in the line of duty for the current year. Anyone is able to access it and take a look at the memorial wall.

Fresno County has adopted its budget for the FY 10/11. The Sheriff’s Department didn’t receive about $400,000 from what the Sheriff requested in allotted monies. What this meant was about 7 professional staff, office assistants being laid off. With the layoff of these office assistants, the impact the public will see is no secretaries at the area substations. The substations will still be open to the deputies for the business we do; however, there will no longer be any public access.

The FDSA engaged in a big budget battle, starting in mid April up until the adopted budget on June 22, 2010. I kept all of you informed as to what was transpiring during all of these budget hearings, and even prior to that. My number one goal is communication with all of you. We are very spread out, and work a variety of shifts and days off. I know I cannot be everywhere all the time. So my goal is to keep you all informed via either email or our website as to what is going on either on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Many of you have seen the Grand Jury Report #12 that was published on Friday, June 25, 2010. This report basically states the Grand Jury’s recommendation that the Sheriff contract with the City of Fresno for patrols in the county islands. We have been dealing with this issue for about the last year now. We have studied the County Islands, we have sparred with the City on this topic. The public has been involved as well, and those specifically who live in the county islands. The residents in the islands have been pretty outspoken and told us they want nothing to do with the City of Fresno patrolling their neighborhoods. They love the service they receive from the Sheriff’s Department and want to continue with that. The FDSA will be researching a little further into the Grand Jury report to find out how and why it was so slanted. Stay tuned for more to come on this. Just as a reminder, the Sheriff will not be contracting her service out to any other agency in regards to the patrols we give to ALL residents in the unincorporated areas of Fresno County.

Stay Safe!!

-Eric

LOCAL ISSUES

Sheriff’s Budget

May Newsletter Budget Update

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Budget has been under scrutiny for the last 3 budget cycles. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors is always asking the Sheriff for transparency with her budget, and constantly challenging her numbers and where she spends her money. This issue came to light during a Board of Supervisors’ Meeting in late January 2010, when the Sheriff and her budget director, Steve Forker had to make some tough decisions when it came to where to trim $7.5 million dollars from this current service and fiscal year. A difficult task to do, however with the help of us, FDSA, by starting to talk about concessions, we started a movement that ultimately affected the entire department from the Sheriff down to the deputies and correctional officers she employs.

During this Board of Supervisors’ meeting the Sheriff told the board to bridge her budget gap she would need to go through with layoffs of correctional staff. The County Board said “No she is not,” and that forced the Sheriff to sue the Board of Supervisors. The suit is stating the Sheriff has the right per the State Constitution to control the money in her budget as she sees fit. By doing this, she has the authority to lay off whom she sees fit to make the budget balance at the end of the fiscal year. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 (Poochigian voting in favor of the Sheriff) to challenge the Sheriff in the so-called authority she claims to have. This then makes for an historic court case, where many in the Sheriff Vs Board of Supervisor world in the rest of the 58 counties are watching very closely.

On Friday, March 26, 2010 the court did not rule in the case but stated that this is more of a power struggle between the Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff. What can one elected official do to the other? The Sheriff is claiming the BOS can give her a budget and she can manage it as she sees fit. The BOS is saying they have the right to say where the Sheriff can spend her money. I truly think in the end the Sheriff will prevail on this issue and prove to the BOS and voters she has certain authorities given to her.

On Thursday April 1, 2010 Judge Franson ruled in this case for the Sheriff. The ruling stated that the Board of Supervisors cannot tell the Sheriff where she can or cannot deploy her resources. The Board of Supervisors gives the Sheriff a pot of money and the Sheriff has the authority to spend that money where she sees fit. Neither the CAO nor the BOS can interfere with that.

Now when it comes to deleting vacant positions the BOS has the authority to do that, and can fund more positions when the Sheriff requests. Pretty cut and dried.

This is a very important decision the FDSA had been following. Had the Judge ruled the opposite way, the deputy sheriffs may have faced some serious cuts in order to keep the jail facility open. So rest assured for now, the Sheriff is going through with laying off an additional 23 Correctional Officers to make her budget whole for the FY 2009/10. _____________________________________________________________________

June Newsletter Budget update

Another wild ride this has become. I have been updating the membership as much as possible as things have been transpiring with the Sheriff’s FY 10/11 budget. The unfortunate thing is the county of Fresno has cried wolf each and every year when dealing with budget building and funding the Sheriff. There are a lot of historical perspectives that come into play when dealing with funding the Sheriff.

The BOS has always questioned the budget of the Sheriff just due to its size in nature. The largest general fund department in the County, where the BOS has no control on how the money gets spent. The Sheriff is elected as well as the five other elected officials all with different ideas in regards to public safety is where we have the issues. We as deputy sheriffs look at it and think there should not be an issue. We see it as not enough resources when we need them. The Sheriff says how much she needs to protect the citizens of Fresno County, while keeping the jails safe and full, and maintaining the court deputies so the prosecutions run smooth. It’s a triangular balance to keep the machine operating. Sometimes BOS and CAO lose track of that, not really any fault of their own, just because they do not do our job. Nonetheless, we have to prove as an agency why we need certain monies to function.

This year is no exception, with one big difference; there literally are little tighter purse strings this year than in the prior years. Prop 172 monies are greatly reduced, Williamson Act monies were slashed from the budget in FY 09/10 and unknown what will happen in FY 10/11. Williamson Act funds are property tax reimbursements from the State to the Counties, subsidizing reduced property taxes on prime farmland. This money generally comes right to our department.

We are facing a shortfall that puts us about 60 deputies short of our current service levels. This is alarming to the FDSA, and we have been battling to get the department funded since mid-April when this staggering number was presented.

During the May 25, 2010, BOS meeting, the issue was on the agenda for discussion. The Sheriff addressed it, I addressed it, and the BOS engaged in what I would say was very productive conversation to mitigate the layoff of deputy sheriffs. The BOS at the end of the day reached a consensus and directed the CAO to go back into the individual department budgets and find 7 million dollars to fix this problem. This will be brought back to the BOS on June 8^th to discuss where the efforts were made. I will update you all at that time as to where we stand. And just a reminder, budget hearings start on Monday June 14, 2010, at 0900 hrs. These will last all week and the BOS should adopt a budget on Friday June 18th, 2010. Stay tuned for more to come on this issue.

Well as most of you know and have read we have successfully passed a budget for the Sheriff’s Department with the County of Fresno. What a wild ride that was. As I have stated in many of my letters prior to this, the FDSA has been at the table with the Sheriff and the County since the onset of getting this budget. Starting from an underfunding of $26 million dollars, and adopting a budget that is roughly $400,000 short of current service level. We lost funding for some clerical staff, but fortunately did not have to lay any employees off.

There were a total of 89 lay off notices served to our members. 59 Deputy Sheriff III, 29 Deputy Sheriff II, and 1 Community Service Officer. These notices caused some controversy and left the door open for interpretation by many deputy sheriffs including myself. This issue will be revisited by the FDSA and County Personnel/Labor in the coming weeks. Thank you to the many of you who brought this to our attention.

I truly believe that during budget hearings our Board of Supervisors showed us they are committed to funding the Sheriff’s Department, so as there would not be any layoffs to sworn personnel. Some would ask if this was a game of politics by the Board and by the Sheriff. Asking me that question in April, I would have told you that it may have been. But as I entrenched the FDSA in the budget process, I found out real quick, the funding is just very hard to come by. Things have to be made creative by both sides to accomplish the goal of keeping the Sheriff’s Department as the top priority of this county. On June 22, 2010 the BOS showed they are committed to us.

I have learned a couple different lessons during all of this budget process. One main lesson is keeping all of you in the loop with what goes on. Granted I put out 5 prior letters to the membership outside of updating you all monthly on this newsletter, just letting you know where we stand. I received many positive feedbacks of giving you the daily updates during the budget so everyone was in the loop as to what is going on. I will continue to do that in the upcoming budget years.

I learned that we do not back down or take any criticism when it comes to how I need to “sell us,” to the public, to the media and to the BOS on the job each and everyone of you does for this agency. I believe it worked and we are all still employed!

As mid-year budget review comes up in January I will continue to give any new information that develops in regards to our budget and all of your jobs.

FUNDRAISING

FDSA BBQ

I want to thank the BBQ crew; Ryan Gilbert, Dora Papion, Judy Stuart (retiree), Quintin Hawkins and Mike Nulick. Without the help of all of you this BBQ would have been difficult to do. I thank you again.

We tried the idea of the shredded beef sandwiches. We used tri-tip and slow cooked it in roasters for about 10 hours during the night. We stuffed sandwiches, made chili, salad, chips and a soda. With the exception of a few warm sodas (My Court Deps, I apologize and the soda is on us next month!) we heard real good reviews from the BBQ sandwiches.

FDSA Building

Numerous events during the month of June. Each weekend the building was rented out for an event. I want to thank all the facilitators who volunteered their time to work for us at these events.

As a member you can rent the building for $250 and NO bartender fee. That is down from $500 and a bartender fee of $120. There is no need to bleed our members to rent the building that you pay for. This rate is even negotiable depending on a couple services the member can guarantee. FDSA is committed to making this building as user friendly as possible for its members. Thank you.

FDSA APPAREL/ITEMS FOR SALE

The FDSA has also started selling “FDSA,” type apparel to our membership. The display case is on the second floor of the FDSA building, with the price list there as well. Tammy is going to be the person who will be selling you the apparel. All checks will be made out to “FDSA.” I will list below some of the items and the prices attached to them. I am looking into setting up a type of Pay Pal account to attach for the FDSA if any of you are interested in ordering online. We will make it as easy as possible to do this. Pay pal seems to be the easiest without having to purchase or rent a credit card machine.

Photos for all are now located on the FDSA website, www.fresnodsa.org. Please take a look.

FDSA Polo Shirt $25.00

FDSA t-shirt S-XXL $15.00

Black Compression Shirts Tight & Loose fit $20.00

4 different styles of flex-fit hats $18.00

Aprons $18.00

Challenge Coins $5.00

FDSA Mugs $10.00

Air Support Unit Patch $8.00

LABOR FRONT/BENEFITS

Labor Beat

Labor Beat is a quarterly newsletter that is put out by our law firm Carroll, Burdick and McDonough for its clients. This is read throughout the labor world both in the public and private sector. I am attaching different excerpts that apply to things in the public sector that may be of some interest to you. I mis quoted last month and told everyone it is a monthly newsletter. I will update this in a couple months from now when the new issue is put out.

Mixed Law Enforcement Units Still Covered by PERB

By Marie Tenny

Governor Schwarzengger recently vetoed Senate Bill 656 (“SB 656”). SB 656 would have amended the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (“MMBA”) to explicitly exempt bargaining units comprised of a mix of peace officers and other employees from the Public Employment Relations Board’s (“PERB”) jurisdiction. The introduction and veto of this bill arguably clarifies that the current exemption does not apply to mixed bargaining units. Thus, mixed unit labor organizations may continue to file their grievances before PERB.

Existing law establishes PERB as the means to resolve disputes and enforce the statutory rights of employees under MMBA. However, Government Code section 3511 in the MMBA exempts persons that qualify as “peace officers as defined in Section 830.1 of the Penal Code” from PERB’s jurisdiction and may bring disputes in the courts. It has been somewhat unclear under the statutory language of section 3511, however, whether a mixed bargaining unit comprised of both 830.1 peace officers, who are exempt from PERB, and other employees (such as Dispatchers, Community Services Officers and Crime Scene Investigators) who are covered by PERB, is subject to PERB’s jurisdiction. PERB has asserted jurisdiction over mixed units when the issue affects the entire bargaining unit, but individual peace officers in a mixed unit may file unfair labor practice cases in the courts.

SB 656, which was supported by the Peace Officers Research Association of California (“PORAC”), would have exempted mixed units, comprised of a majority of peace officers, from the jurisdiction of PERB. The California State Association of Counties and the Regional Council of Rural Counties (“CSAC”) opposed SB 656 because it “believed that it is inappropriate to extend what is now a narrow exemption from PERB for peace officers to a larger group of miscellaneous employees.” Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill because it treats non-peace officer employees differently if they are in an organization with a peace officer majority. He concluded that these non-peace officer employees should not be allowed to “circumvent the existing dispute resolution process that currently exists through the Public Employment Relations Board.”

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

-By Isaac Torres

Results from the June 8^th Primary

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 1
Phil Larson – Winner and Run off in November

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 4
Judy Case -Winner

Fresno County District Attorney
Elizabeth Egan -Winner

Fresno Sheriff
Margaret Mims - Winner

Fresno County Coroner-Public Guardian
David Hadden - Winner

Candidate for State Assembly 31st District:
Henry Perea Jr. (D) -Winner

Candidate for State Senate 16th District:
Michael Rubio (D) - Winner

Candidate for State Senate 14^th District:

Tom Berryhill (R) -Winner

Fresno Superior Court Judge:

Jim Petrucelli -Winner

California State Attorney General:

Alberto Terrico (D) - Lost

California State Insurance Commissioner:

Michael Villines (R) - Winner

Candidate for Fresno City Council District 7:

Clint Olivier – Winner

Candidates for Fresno County Assessor-Recorder:
Carole Laval – Winner and Run off in November

Candidates for State Assembly 29th district:
Linda Halderman (R) - Winner

Candidates for State Assembly 30th district:

Have not weighed in on this race

Fran Flores (D)

Pete Parra (D)

Stephanie Campbell (R)

David ValaDao (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 18th District:

Have not weighed in on this race

Dennis Cardoza (D) (incumbent)

Michael Berryhill (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 19th District:
Richard Pombo (R) - Lost

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 20th District:

Have not weighed in on this race

Jim Costa (D) (incumbent)

Steve Haze (D)

Serafin Quintanar (R)

Andy Vidak (R)

Richard Lake (R)

Candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 21st District:

Devin Nunes (R) - Winner

Pension Update

Vallejo bankruptcy tied up in binding arbitration

By Ed Mendel

Police in Vallejo are scheduled to receive a 7 percent pay raise next month, part of a labor contract negotiated after the city declared bankruptcy two years ago.

“The police getting a 7 percent raise is insane,” said Vallejo Councilwoman Marti Brown, elected last November months after the police contract was approved. “No one is getting a 7 percent increase, even in cities not in bankruptcy.”

Brown co-chaired a campaign for a ballot measure to give city negotiators a stronger position at the bargaining table by repealing “binding arbitration.” Measure A held a slim lead after the vote Tuesday, but outstanding ballots are still being counted.

Under binding arbitration, when management and unions do not agree on a new contract an impartial arbitrator selects the offer of one side or the other. The arbitrator cannot work out a compromise between the two positions.

Brown and two other council members, Stephanie Gomes and Joanne Schivley, said in videos on the Measure A website that union negotiators use binding arbitration as a threat because arbitrators usually select the union position.

Typically, said Schivley, the argument is that the arbitrator is likely to pick the union position and the expensive arbitration will only add to the cost. She said the result has been labor contracts that the city cannot afford.

“There is no doubt that it (binding arbitration) has contributed to the financial situation of the city, which culminated in the bankruptcy filing in May 2008,” Schivley said.

Gomes said 81 cents of every taxpayer dollar collected by the city is spent on employee costs. She said the result of “binding arbitration” is that the city council has not been able to control costs.

“That’s what got us to this place where we have unsustainable contracts,” she said.

Vallejo put “binding arbitration” into the city charter in 1970, Gomes said, during the era of the “Zodiac” serial killer. She said city officials did not want a strike by police or firefighters, but strikes by safety workers were banned shortly afterward.

Officials at the League of California Cities said Vallejo may have been the first to adopt binding arbitration. A count several years ago found that about 20 cities and at least one county have binding arbitration.

About 120 of the 480 cities in California operate under their own charter, like Vallejo. Legislation a decade ago imposed binding arbitration on the rest of the cities and counties operating under general law.

In a lawsuit originating in Sonoma County, the binding arbitration law was ruled unconstitutional and overturned by the courts. But binding arbitration still has strong support from unions and their Democratic allies.

Measure A backers said their shoestring campaign faced well-financed opposition, with some money coming from unions in other cities. The Measure A opponents listed endorsements from a half dozen Democratic congressmen and state legislators.

The Vallejo Times-Herald opposed Measure A, calling it a “distraction” that would not help the city.

“Voters inserted the charter clause four decades ago in part due to the public safety unions’ deep mistrust of City Hall, a feeling that led to an ugly strike,” said the newspaper. “Removing this clause would only ratchet up the current mistrust to new levels, a scenario that serves no useful purpose, and could even be costly to the citizenry.”

The Vallejo bankruptcy is widely watched because the city asked a federal bankruptcy court to overturn labor contracts. That issue did not arise in the Orange County bankruptcy in the 1990s or the lesser-known Desert Hot Springs bankruptcy.

If bankruptcy allows Vallejo to overturn otherwise ironclad labor contracts and shed or restructure pay and retirement costs, will other struggling cities and counties be tempted to do the same?

Taking no chances, public employee unions are backing a bill, AB 155 by Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, D-Norwalk, that would require local governments to go before a labor-friendly commission in Sacramento before filing bankruptcy.

While in bankruptcy, Vallejo negotiated new contracts with three unions: police, firefighters and managers. But there was no agreement with a fourth union, the electrical workers.

In a landmark ruling last September, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael McManus in Sacramento overturned the electrical workers contract after mediation failed. An appeal was heard in March by U.S. District Judge John Mendez and a ruling is pending.

Meanwhile, arbitration of the electrical worker contract began last month. But if Measure A wins and McManus’s decision to overturn the contract is upheld, the arbitration may not continue.

“I would say there is a good chance the city will probably walk away from the table,” said Councilwoman Brown. Then if there is no agreement, she said, the city could impose its final offer.

As a Sacramento city employee who has been on the labor side of the bargaining table, Brown said, she understands the power of binding arbitration. She was part of an unsuccessful drive to put a repeal measure on the Vallejo ballot two years ago.

Brown faults the city for not immediately moving to repeal binding arbitration after declaring bankruptcy. Instead, she said, the city waited for a recommendation from a commission to put a measure on the ballot, passing on a chance for a vote last November.

“We did have some opportunities — a lot of it squandered, unfortunately,” she said.

On Tuesday, the city council is scheduled to consider a hard-times budget and a proposal to put a one-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot.

General fund revenue has dropped nearly 25 percent in the last two years, from $83.6 million in fiscal 2007-08 to an estimated $63.4 million in the new fiscal year beginning next month.

Police officers have been cut from 155 to 104, and without the tax increase may drop to 87. Firefighter companies have been cut from nine to six, and without a tax increase may drop to five.

Concern that a shrinking police force is resulting in more crime in Vallejo has been reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times.

An exception to the deep cuts is pension costs. The proposed budget would spend $12.8 million, about 20 percent of general fund revenue, on the annual payment to the California Public Employees Retirement System.

That’s more than the $10.2 million asked by CalPERS, which adopted a “smoothing” policy to phase in increased payments needed to cover huge investment losses in the stock market crash.

But city officials hope to give Judge McManus a plan for emerging from bankruptcy this summer. And they want to show the city is dealing with long-term debt and not likely to slide back into bankruptcy.

The increased payment results in a projection that the future pension obligation would be 80 percent funded, regarded as an acceptable minimum. Getting to 100 percent would require a payment of $16.5 million, about 25 percent of general fund revenue.

Benefits embattled across U.S.

By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com

Published: Sunday, Jun. 13, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

California is bracing for a big increase in the cost of supporting its public employee pensions. Other states, by contrast, are slashing retirement expenses.

In an effort to reduce the burden on their budgets, at least a dozen states have passed laws this year overhauling their retirement systems. Some have created less-generous pensions for newly hired workers. Others have increased the amount of money employees must pay into their pensions. Some have done both.

The trend is being driven by big budget deficits and the 2008 stock market crash, which left many pension plans underfunded. Meanwhile, sympathy for public employees' pensions has waned as anxious voters in the private sector struggle with turbulent 401(k) plan results and frozen pensions.

Arizona, Mississippi and Virginia are among those that instituted lower retirement benefits for newly hired workers. Even union-friendly states like Michigan and Illinois, their budgets depleted by the recession, reduced pensions for new hires.

"You have an almost unprecedented revenue crisis for state governments and an almost unprecedented loss in investment value," said Ron Snell, a pension expert with the National Conference of State Legislatures. "A lot of these issues came together – it has become a flood tide of action."

But the waters haven't yet reached California, where the two big public pension funds are looking to state government for more money – and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempts to reduce retirement expenses are running into resistance.

CalPERS and CalSTRS say they need additional state and local government dollars to help them recover from the 2008 market crash, which cost them a combined $100 billion.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System was on the verge last month of billing the state an additional $600 million for the upcoming fiscal year, an 18 percent increase. At the last minute the board postponed the decision, saying it wants to see if increases can be put off for another year to ease the strain on a state budget that's $19 billion in the red. A decision is expected this week.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System is at least a year away from raising rates. The teachers' fund, unlike CalPERS, needs the Legislature's approval to set contribution rates, and the fund doesn't plan to approach lawmakers until 2011.

Despite the two funds' money problems, Schwarzenegger's plan for a two-tier pension system, with lower benefits for new hires, is making little headway in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

A small union representing California state scientists has opened the door a crack to a two-tier system. But the largest unions remain opposed, including powerful Local 1000 of the Service Employees International Union.

Regardless of what happens elsewhere, "we need to work on California based on California's numbers," said Jim Zamora, spokesman for Local 1000. "Every state and every jurisdiction is different."

The trends in other states "give a talking point to advocates of reform, but I don't think it's very persuasive to the union leaders (in California), at least not yet," said political analyst Jack Pitney of Claremont McKenna College.

The average CalPERS pension pays $25,212 a year. The average CalSTRS pension is significantly higher – $34,668 – but officials with the fund note that their members don't collect Social Security.

Private sector pensions average $11,282 a year, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Public employee unions say their relatively hefty pensions represent a fair trade-off because their members earn smaller salaries during their careers than their private-sector counterparts.

Still, public employee pensions around the country have come under scrutiny as state legislatures cope with sagging revenue and the fallout from the market crash.

"Certainly in the wake of the investment losses of 2008, a lot of plans took a look at their numbers and found that they needed to make some changes … in order to preserve or restore the plans' sustainability," said Keith Brainard, research director at the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. "The level of attention being given to public employee compensation is heightened."

The issue reached a flash point in Illinois. The leading Wall Street debt-rating agencies were threatening to downgrade the state's credit rating because of Illinois' budget woes, including troubles in the pension funds. A downgrade would have jeopardized financing for billions of dollars worth of public works construction projects.

So lawmakers in April passed a series of pension changes. The law will reduce benefits for newly hired state and municipal employees – and will force them to work longer before they can retire with full pensions. The plan will save billions.

But it wasn't good enough for Wall Street. Moody's Investors Service last week cut Illinois' credit rating anyway, saying pensions remain a huge burden despite the new law.

"We believe that pension underfunding will continue to be the primary source of fiscal pressure on the state for many years," Moody's said.

State Senate committee kills governor's pension reform bill

By The Associated Press

Posted: 06/14/2010 05:59:11 PM PDT

SACRAMENTO - A Senate committee has defeated a bill backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have cut California's long-term pension costs by reducing benefits for newly hired state employees.

Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth's bill would have required new state employees to pay more toward their retirement. Most would have to work 10 years longer, until age 65, to be eligible for retirement benefits.

Hollingsworth, a Republican from Murrieta, says his bill would have saved the state $110 billion over 30 years.

Schwarzenegger has made pension reform a priority of his final year in office. He says the pension system's unfunded liabilities endanger the state's long-term fiscal health.

The bill, SB919, failed on a party-line vote in the Public Employment and Retirement Committee Monday.

PORAC

CHAPTER MINUTES

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The chapter meeting was held at DiCicco’s Italian Restaurant in Merced. Chapter President James Bewley called the meeting to order at 1907 hrs. After self-introductions, PORAC President Ron Cottingham led us in the pledge of allegiance. There was a moment of silence for those officers killed in the line of duty, especially for Officer/Pilot Danny Benavides, CHP – Imperial County, EOW: May 7, 2010.

President Bewley said we would take PAC out of order because we had two candidates at this meeting who had other events to attend.

PAC: Chapter PAC Rep Jim Watson presented his monthly report on the balances available in the Chapter PAC & PIC accounts.

He attended PORAC’s Legislative Day in Sacramento on May 5^th along with James Bewley, Jacky Parks, Eric Schmidt and Robert Arendt. They met with Senator Dave Cogdill and Assembly Members Tom Berryhill, Mike Villines, Danny Gilmore and Juan Arambula. Watson also met with Assembly Member Cathleen Galgiani.

Watson introduced State Senator Jeff Denham, Republican candidate to replace Congressman George Radanovich in the 19^th CD. Denham currently represents the 12^th SD. Denham gave us background information, told us what he has accomplished in the state legislature and what he plans to do after he is elected with water issues at the top of his agenda. Radanovich has endorsed him and he has had a good working relationship with PORAC during his time in the legislature. He answered questions from the members and asked for our support.

Watson next introduced Anna Caballero, Democratic candidate for the 12^th SD. Currently Caballero represents the 28^th AD. She provided us with her background information and told why she in running for the 12^th SD. She answered several questions from the members related to the state budget, the budget deficit and law enforcement funding. She asked for our support.

The last candidate Watson introduced was David Robinson, candidate for Kings County Sheriff. Robinson currently is a Kings County DA investigator and is a member of Kings DSA. He gave us background information and explained why he is running for sheriff. He has been endorsed by the Kings Co DSA, Lemoore POA and Hanford POA. He asked for our endorsement.

Jeff Denham and Anna Caballero left the meeting after their presentations. Bewley asked David Robinson to step out of the meeting briefly.

Watson reminded us about Susan Anderson’s fund raiser in July. We have supported her in the past and we are dark in July so he asked the chapter to take this up now.

Chapter Minutes – 05/18/10

Upon a motion duly made by Isaac Torres, second by Jacky Parks, that the chapter donates $500 from PAC to Fresno County Supervisor Susan Anderson’s Birthday Party fundraiser on Thursday, July 29, 2010.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by Jacky Parks, second by Jim Henderson, that the chapter recommends the endorsement of Anna Caballero for the 12^th SD.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by Jacky Parks, second by Manuel Flores, that the chapter endorses David Robinson for Kings County Sheriff.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by John Willow, second by Jacky Parks, that the chapter donate $1,000 from PAC to David Robinson’s campaign for Kings County Sheriff.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by Isaac Torres, second by Jacky Parks, that the Chapter recommends the endorsement of Dr. Linda Halderman for the 29^th AD.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by Jacky Parks, second by John Willow, that the chapter endorses Clint Olivier for Fresno City Council District 7.

The motion carried.

Upon a motion duly made by Jacky Parks, second by Isaac Torres, that the chapter donates $500 from PAC to Clint Olivier’s campaign for Fresno City Council District 7.

The motion carried.

David Robinson returned to the meeting and thanked the chapter for the endorsement and donation to his campaign.

Approval of Minutes: President Bewley asked for a motion to approve the minutes from the April 20, 2010 chapter meeting.

Upon a motion duly made by Mike Harris, second by Jim Henderson, to approve the minutes from the April 201, 2010 chapter meeting as submitted.

The motion carried.

Financial Report: Treasurer Mike Cavallero reported the balance in the chapter checking account as of April 30, 2010 was $5,959.82.

Director’s Report: President Ron Cottingham reported on a recent meeting with the governor on the state budget and one of the issues that governor is pushing is reform in the state pension system. Jacky Parks gave an overview of the recent board meeting held in Sacramento on May 6^th. A new association, Hanford PMA, was approved for membership and will be in our chapter. PORAC News will be published by 911 Media.

Chapter Minutes – 05/18/10

Legislative Report: Jacky Parks spoke about the various issues covered during PORAC’s Annual Legislative Day. The main issues were reauthorization of VLF for law enforcement funding, pension and health care reform MUST be done ONLY through the collective bargaining process. PORAC co-sponsored AB 1697 (Hall) that changes the reimbursement process from being administered by the Administrative

Office of the Courts (AOC) to the state legislature. On the Workers’ Compensation front, PORAC has sponsored AB 2397 (Solorio). This bill would allow for an additional 365 days of 4850 time if mutually agreed by the public safety employee and the employer.

LDF Report: Andy Schlenker introduced Ed Fishman, Legal Administrator of the LDF Trust, and Rebecca Mann, Assistant Legal Administrator. Fishman spoke about the rise in LDF usage in the last five years and noted that discipline is more harsh and severe. He also updated the members on several criminal and administrative cases. Mann is the civil case monitor for the trust. She reviewed the process and reminded the members not to hesitate to contact LDF on civil issues.

Mark Johnson, Mastagni Law Firm, spoke about the value of the PORAC’s LDF Trust.

I & B Report: Board Trustee Mike Durant reviewed the recent I & B Trust meeting. There was discussion involving LTD issues and the trust continues to move forward with updates for both membership and claims.

AFLAC for PORAC – the new AFLAC reps for our chapter are Dan Sweeney and David Folia. They look forward to meeting our members and providing whatever assistance may be needed.

California Casualty – Meri Graham had to leave the meeting before the I & B Report.

RMT Report: Trustee Bill Harbottle was attending a RMT meeting in San Diego and could not attend this meeting. There was no report.

RAM Report: Cavallero reported the RAM Committee met in Sacramento on May 8^th. RAM membership has gone past 4,000 as of May 1, 2010. The LDF Plan V has been finalized and almost 400 RAM members have applied for the plan. There has been discussion about beginning the plan on June 1, 2010, but that must be approved by the LDF trustees. Associations are asked to remind their retiring members to join RAM.

Association Report:

Clovis POA: John Willow said they are doing their best to deal with declining revenue and reduced staffing.

Los Banos POA: Preston Jelen reported they lost 12 positions in December 2009 and the city imposed an MOU that included a 9% pay reduction.

Chapter Minutes – 05/18/10

Livingston POA: Tyson Perry said they are trying to deal with a significant budget shortfall for FY2010-2011.

Merced POA: Keith Pelowski had nothing new to report. They are dealing with the same issues as all other associations.

Kings DSA: Damon Perryman said this was the first chapter meeting he has attended and had nothing to report.

Fresno DSA: Eric Schmidt said their main focus will be to protect their members from layoffs. The county budget shortfall seems to be focused on public safety.

Fresno POA: Jacky Parks provided a summary of a tentative agreement for a side letter to the current MOU that would save the city a little over $3 million in the upcoming budget. FPOA membership approved the TA during general membership meetings on April 26^th. The city council has not yet approved the TA. The association is dealing with several other issues related to the city’s budget shortfall.

Old Business: None

New Business: Mike Harris, Fresno POA, gave an overview of a plan involving well known artist Kaziah Hancock of Utah that would commemorate our fallen officers. Harris showed two portraits recently done by Hancock in memory of Fresno Deputy Sheriff Joel Wahlenmaier and Reedley Officer Javier Bejar.

Next Meeting: The next chapter meeting will be on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 and will be held at the Fresno DSA Office.

President Bewley adjourned the meeting at 2110 hrs.

State Issues

PORAC Applauds Legislature and Governor for Approving and Signing Common Sense Public Safety Measure

PORAC Advocated for Measure to Ban Felons from Possessing Body Armor, SB 408 – Now Signed by Governor Schwarzenegger

Sacramento, CA – The Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), the largest statewide public safety association in the nation representing 62,000 public safety members and 890 public safety associations, praises legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today for their swift action in passing Senate Bill 408, by Senator Alex Padilla (D- Pacoima).

“The public safety community believes this bill is not only necessary, but is critically important,” said PORAC President Ron Cottingham. “Violent criminals possessing body armor are extremely dangerous to law enforcement.”

Senate Bill 408 reinstates California law, making it illegal for violent felons to possess body armor. This bill provides a straightforward, practical definition of body armor as “any bullet-resistant material intended to provide ballistic and trauma protection for the person wearing the body armor.”

This removes any ambiguity in the law by making it clear to any lay person that violent felons are prohibited from possessing any body armor whatsoever. This law is critical now more than ever, because of recent attacks against peace officers by felons wearing body armor. In Los Angeles this past March, a parolee with 19 arrests and four convictions was wearing body armor while he led police on a high speed chase.

In January, a gunman suspected of killing eight people in Virginia was wearing a bulletproof vest when he was apprehended by police.

“There is no situation we can fathom where a convicted felon would need the use of body armor,” Cottingham continued. “We appreciate lawmakers’ swift action on this necessary law, and PORAC appreciates working together with our brother public safety associations and with our elected officials to make California a safer place to live.”

Background

The law prohibiting possession of body armor by violent felons was passed following two infamous incidents: the 1994 killing of San Francisco Police Officer James Guelff, murdered by a robber wearing body armor; and the notorious North Hollywood shootout in 1997 that saw eleven LAPD officers and six civilians wounded during a prolonged exchange of gunfire with two bank robbery thugs clad head to toe in assembled body armor.

The Second District court decision stemmed from an incident in which LAPD officers stopped parolee Ethan Saleem in 2007 after he served time for his conviction of voluntary manslaughter. Saleem was wearing a 10-pound, military-style armored vest with a label reading “body armor, fragmentation protection,” which was not allowed because of his violent felony conviction.

In Closing

I wanted to touch on the layoff process the County of Fresno has set up when they implement the article for laying off employees. We as deputies have never felt this in a long time, about 20 years. During the process, it was identified that there is a problem with the way the procedure is set up, in regards to the deputy sheriff series.

I want to thank Austin Herion and David Rippe for really bringing it to the FDSA’s attention. This was the first time I personally have dealt with the layoff procedure and concur with Austin and David that there is room for improvement. David and I sat down with the County on June 30^th to discuss our concerns, which to a pleasant surprise, echoed the same concerns of Fresno County. There are currently different models being explored at the county personnel level to fix this problem. I will keep you all up to date on this issue as it progresses.

I want to emphasize to you that my door is always open to any member, day or night that needs to talk to me about any issue. Don’t hesitate as I will make myself available as I have been doing for the last two years as your President.

Take Care

-Eric

PRESIDENT'S NEWSLETTER

June 2, 2010

President’s Comments:

The mission statement on the FDSA website talks about what we do as an Association for the membership and for the community. First and foremost we are here to take care of each other. That is my number one priority as your President. We hear that a lot, “Take care of your people.” There comes a time when that will be tested, and a good leader needs to step up to the plate and show what that really means.

A leader for me, one who has proven to me that he leads people, is Retired General Harold Moore, United States Army. This man not only had the respect and trust of his troops, but he treated them like human beings and would listen to them. He never promised anything unless he could deliver. A man of family and faith, just so well rounded, almost a text book figure. There are many “leadership” schools out on the market for law enforcement officers. However, I truly believe you cannot teach someone how to lead people. You either have it or you don’t. People will follow you or they won’t. I think taking little bits and pieces from here and there is how it gets done. And quite honestly not everyone in this world can be a leader. I have met many people in my life who have told me they are soldiers and that is it. Give them a task and it gets done. We need soldiers in this world as well, almost more than we need a leader.

There are many people who you may not think are leaders in this world, but once things start breaking apart and the stress levels rise to their peak that is when these people shine. We have seen it many times in the media, many times in person with incidents we get involved with..

I take a lot of pride as a Deputy Sheriff working in Fresno County. I have learned a lot through trial and error working as your President. Taking on battles is something that is always a trial and error. Learning from positives and learning from mistakes is something I have done for all of you. A recent issue arose with the death of Deputy Wahlenmaier that I decided to take on for the future of Deputy Sheriffs in Fresno County, when and if we are killed in the line of duty.

Current county policy basically states that if you die prior to retirement, your annual leave hours are cashed out to you using a convoluted formula. However they shall not exceed the current 400 hours of cash value of any bank of time built up. Deputy Wahlenmaier had in excess of 1100 hours built up in his time bank. The county cashed out his surviving spouse about 250 hours, and called the rest of them “Lost.”

This was not right and I was not going to take that as an answer. I met with the CAO who said “Too bad so sad.” I then met with each board member individually and reached a consensus that he should receive the entire balance of hours.

Supervisors Larson and Perea carried this for the FDSA at my request to get county policy changed to a benefit for any future deputy sheriff death in this county. See below the new policy set for you and your family.

Approve Administrative Policy Number 70, effective January 1, 2010, authorizing an additional benefit equal to the value of any accrued leave not otherwise cashed out or used to increase the retirement benefit for the beneficiary of a County of Fresno law enforcement peace officer who is killed in the line of duty through violent criminal means!

Deputy Wahlenmaier was one person I always looked up to as a leader. Deputy Wahlenmaier continues to give although no longer with us, by indirectly creating this policy to protect the future Deputy Sheriffs in this department. Deputy Wahlenmaier, a true leader in my eyes.

LOCAL ISSUES

Sheriff’s Budget

This year is no exception, with one big difference; there literally are a little tighter purse strings this year than in the prior years. Prop 172 monies are greatly reduced, Williamson Act monies were slashed from the budget in FY09/10 and unknown what will happen in FY 10/11. Williamson Act funds are property tax reimbursements from the State to the Counties, subsidizing reduced property taxes on prime farmland. This money generally comes right to our department.

During the May 25, 2010 BOS meeting, the issue was on the agenda for discussion. The Sheriff addressed it, I addressed it, and the BOS engaged in what I would say was very productive conversation to mitigate the layoff of deputy sheriffs. The BOS at the end of the day reached a consensus and directed the CAO to go back into the individual department budgets and find 7 million dollars to fix this problem. This will be brought back to the BOS on June 8^th to discuss where the efforts were made. I will update you all at that time as to where we stand. And just a reminder, budget hearings start on Monday, June 14, 2010 at 0900 hrs. These will last all week and the BOS should adopt a budget on Friday June 18^th, 2010. Stay tuned for more to come on this issue.

FUNDRAISING

FDSA BBQ

I want to thank the BBQ crew; Ryan Gilbert, Kelly Mayfield, Christina Meza, Christine Versola. Without the help of all of you these BBQ’s would be difficult to do. I thank you again.

We will be going another month with the tri-tip lunches. We have had some requests for pulled pork sandwiches. We are catering the upcoming PORAC dinner on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 as a test run to see how the reviews are on the meal. If they are good, we may do this in June, or July at the latest. Just depending on our stock and pricing.

We have started using a company called J&D Food Service for supply. This company gets us what we want for everything at a very reasonable price. They deliver to the FDSA, all we have to do is put the order in. This cuts out the time of having to go to Costco or Smart and Final for our supplies. That is very time consuming. The time management on using this food service company is awesome and they have been great to work with thus far.

Keep your eye out for the change up in the menu, and please come down and try it out.

FDSA Building

There have been some improvements to the building in the last month. We have finally upgraded the men’s restroom on the first floor by incorporating a toilet stall and a urinal partition to separate the sink. This modification will cut down on the line outside of the bathroom during events.

UFC fight nights will continue through the summer. Remember those are free events to members on the nights they are aired and put together.

FDSA APPAREL/ITEMS FOR SALE

Photos for all are now located on the FDSA website, www.fresnodsa.org. Please take a look.

FDSA Polo Shirt	FDSA T Shirt (S-XXL)	Black Compression Shirt
$25.00 Each	$15.00 Each	Tight or Loose Fit
		$20.00 Each
4 Different Styles of Flex Fit Hats	Aprons	Challenge Coins
$18.00 Each	$18.00 Each	$5.00 Each

FDSA Mugs		Air Support Unit Patch
$10.00 Each		$8.00 Each

LABOR FRONT/BENEFITS

Labor Beat

· Attack on Retirement: An Update and Call to Join Coalition

Last year, we reported that a judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court threw out the Orange County Board of Supervisors’ (“B.O.S.”) legal action aimed at repealing part of a pension agreement with the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs (“the Deputy Sheriffs”). The B.O.S contended that a 2001 labor agreement that increased the pension benefits of the Deputy Sheriffs from 2% at 50 to 3% at 50 violated the California State Constitution’s prohibitions on deficit spending and gifts of public funds. The B.O.S sought to repeal that agreement along with the increased pension benefits that resulted from it.

Although the B.O.S. lost at the trial court level, they have appealed to the Second District Appellate Court in an effort to overturn the trial court’s decision. The parties are in the process of briefing the issues and we will keep you updated on the decision. We expect oral argument to be set sometime in the end of this year.

CBM is committed to fighting any and all attempts to retroactively reduce public employees’ pension benefits. Therefore, while we are not directly involved in this case, we intend to file an Amicus Curiae brief on behalf of an existing coalition of public sector unions.

As of the publication of this article, associations with cumulative membership of over 50,000 public employees have already joined the coalition, including CCPOA, CDF Firefighters, Colusa DSA, CSEA Retirees, Fresno Sheriff’s DSA, Marin Professional Firefighters IAFF 1775, Novato PFA, Sacramento County Attorneys’ Association, San Francisco MEA, San Francisco POA, San Jose POA, Santa Clara DSA, Santa Cruz MMA, Sunnyvale MMA, Sunnyvale PSOA, Sunnyvale Public Safety Managers Association, and the Tuolumne DSA. There is still time to add your association to the cause.

Any association interested in joining the coalition against the attack on retirement benefits should contact CBM partner Jason Jasmine in the Sacramento Office (916-446-5297). You can also see our website for past issues of the Labor Beat in which we discussed this case, and additional information regarding this case. The direct link to the proper page is: www.cbmlaw.com/areas-of-expertise/public-sector.asp

· Because Officers Can Don and Doff at Home, Ninth Circuit Denies Compensation; Officers Appeal

Bamonte v. City of Mesa

In Mesa, Arizona, police officers have the option don and doff their uniforms and gear at home, though the department provides changing rooms with lockers and trains officers to don and doff at work for safety reasons. Nearly all officers don and doff at the department. Only motorcycle officers generally don and doff at home, because they begin their shifts as soon as they leave their homes on their motorcycles. Against this backdrop, the officers sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act for compensation for the time they spend donning and doffing.

In a deeply divided 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied compensation under the FLSA because the officers had the option to don and doff off-site, which led the court to conclude that the donning and doffing was not integral and indispensable to the officers’ principal work activity.

The officers have filed a petition seeking a rehearing en banc before an eleven member panel of Ninth Circuit judges. In order to secure permission for this hearing, they must persuade a majority of the twenty-seven active Ninth Circuit judges to vote to grant it.

En banc hearings are usually reserved for cases that create a circuit split or are otherwise very important. Here, the officers argue that the Bamonte decision creates a circuit split because it relied almost completely on one factor -- where the donning and doffing takes place – whereas past decisions used a multi-factor, context-specific analysis.

Until we know whether the Ninth Circuit will reconsider Bamonte en banc, expect future plaintiffs to look to California minimum wage laws and other state theories to secure fair compensation for their work.

Returning to Bamonte v. City of Mesa, Judge Johnnie Rawlinson’s majority opinion, affirming summary judgment for the City of Mesa, applied the traditional three prong test identified in IBP v. Alvarez but appeared to apply it in a new and narrow way. That test asks: 1) whether the activity constitutes “work (defined as defined as “physical or mental exertion . . . controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily

and primarily for the benefit of the employer”); 2) whether the activity is an “integral and indispensable” duty; and 3) whether the activity is de minimis.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546

U.S. 21 (2005). The court reached prong two before concluding that none of the donning and doffing was compensable.

Under prong one, the majority found that the officers’ donning and doffing might be considered work because it was done at the employer’s direction and for the employer’s benefit.

The majority’s interpretation of prong two spawned a dissent so blistering that the majority spent much of the rest of the decision trying to justify its decision to the dissent. The majority interpreted prong two very narrowly, defining an activity as integral and indispensable when the nature of the work (in this case, police work) required donning and doffing on the employer’s premises. The majority denied compensation because: a) officers had the option to don and doff at home; and b) the department derived no particular benefit from having the officers don and doff onsite.

Judge Gould’s dissent complained bitterly about the analytical approach and the result. He pointed out that the majority essentially created a new rule by giving so much weight to whether the donning and doffing is performed onsite. Prior courts’ analyses considered location as just one of many factors when evaluating whether an activity was integral and indispensable to the principal work activity (and therefore compensable). No one factor (including location) had been required to ensure compensation.

Judge Gould would have found that the officers should be paid for the donning and doffing of gear (but not uniforms) because, when looking at all the facts and circumstances in context, the officers donned and doffed specialized gear for the particularized benefit of the employer, regardless of where this work happened. Moreover, even if location was a dispositive factor, Judge Gould would likely have found the activity integral and indispensable because he would look not only the official policy, but also the practical reality that the officers donned and doffed onsite due to safety reasons identified by the employer.

The officers’ Petition for Rehearing en banc agrees with the dissent, urging the Ninth Circuit to continue using the broader and more context specific test for when work is integral and indispensable to the principal work activity. Well settled precedent has long established that compensable work can be performed at home. It would not be logical to conclude that work done at home is compensable, unless that work is donning and doffing! We will keep readers posted about whether the Ninth Circuit grants a rehearing.

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

-By Isaac Torres

On June 8th, 2010, we will all head to the polls to cast our ballots for the best candidates in our local races. In some of these races, the candidates who won their political party's nomination will square off against each other in the November general election.

As you may know, the economy is still taking a turn for the worst and there is no end in sight. California's sales tax revenues are projected to be down for the final quarter of the of the 2009/2010 budget year. The Fresno County Sheriff's Office along with other county justice services depend almost entirely on general fund revenues to provide quality public safety services for Fresno County residents and businesses. General fund revenues are, in large part, dependent on property tax revenues.

The FDSA feels that it is very important to choose the right candidates who are STRONG public safety supporters not just in their words, but in their actions. Each FDSA endorsed candidate MUST be business friendly, because the sales and property taxes generated from the businesses goes directly into the general fund, which in turn funds public safety.

I know that some of the FDSA membership has questioned why the FDSA has endorsed certain candidates who do not belong to their party affiliation. Let me clarify this by saying that it's not about our individual political views, but what is good for the association membership.

The FDSA has already previously endorsed the following candidates because of their experience, commitment, consistency and integrity necessary to support County operations, including public safety services provided by FDSA members. Please join the FDSA and support the following candidates in the June 2010 primary election.

******See Below for complete list of candidates the FDSA has endorsed for the June 8 primary election*******

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 1
Phil Larson

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 4
Judy Case

Fresno County District Attorney
Elizabeth Eagan

Fresno Sheriff
Margaret Mims

Fresno County Coroner-Public Guardian
David Hadden

Candidate for State Assembly 31st District:
Henry Perea Jr. (D)

Candidate for State Senate 16th District:
Michael Rubio (D)

Candidate for State Senate 14^th District:

Tom Berryhill (R)

Fresno Superior Court Judge:

Jim Petrucelli

California State Attorney General:

Alberto Terrico (D)

California State Insurance Commissioner:

Michael Villines (R)

Candidate for Fresno City Council District 7:

Clint Olivier

Candidates for Fresno County Assessor-Recorder:
Carole Laval

Candidates for State Assembly 29th district:
Linda Halderman (R)

Candidates for State Assembly 30th district:

Have not weighed in on this race

Fran Flores (D)

Pete Parra (D)

Stephanie Campbell (R)

David ValaDao (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 18th District:

Have not weighed in on this race

Dennis Cardoza (D) (incumbent)

Michael Berryhill (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 19th District:
Richard Pombo (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 20th District:

Have not weighed in on this race

Jim Costa (D) (incumbent)

Steve Haze (D)

Serafin Quintanar (R)

Andy Vidak (R)

Richard Lake (R)

Candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 21st District:

Devin Nunes (R)

Pension Update

CARLSBAD: Council cuts pension benefits for new firefighters

Declaring contract talks were truly at an "impasse," Carlsbad's City Council terminated negotiations Tuesday with the city's Firefighters' Association and voted to impose a contract that contains a two-tiered retirement system with lower benefits for new employees.

The city's mayor said the decision was a long-term necessity to keep Carlsbad in good fiscal health. Carlsbad firefighter representatives said it was a sad move that would put the city in a place it doesn't want to be.

"We tried to extend an olive branch," Firefighters' Association Vice President Chris Lawrence said moments after the vote, as he discussed the final contract offer firefighters made as talks entered the impasse stage.

Lawrence said the council's decision would disappoint the city's firefighters, but would not affect the high quality of care they provide.

The hefty size of some government pensions has been a hot-button issue since the nation's economy began souring. Carlsbad is the first in the San Diego region, some observers said Tuesday night, and perhaps even the first in the state to back away from the current 3-percent-at-50 retirement system, which many communities began offering to firefighters and police officers early in the decade when stock market conditions were rosy.

"We did it during the good days when money was flush .... that was a mistake, and we're trying to make a correction," Mayor Bud Lewis said moments after the council's 4-1 vote.

Councilman Keith Blackburn opposed the decision, arguing that Carlsbad should be cautious and not be the first community to take such a drastic step. If all the other cities in the region have much better retirement plans, then Carlsbad is going to be the "last resort" employment option for any new firefighter, he said.

"When every other city has rejected him, then he'll come to Carlsbad," he said.

The mayor responded that he didn't think young people pick jobs based on the retirement plan options, saying it sure wasn't an issue for him decades ago when he was a new teacher.

Under the current 3-percent-at-50 plan, firefighters who retire at age 50 can get 3 percent of their highest salary times the number of years they have worked for the city. City officials have said that in Carlsbad, the average firefighter or police officer typically retires at age 55 and has 28 years of service with the city. Using the 3 percent salary calculation, that person would receive an annual city pension of $76,440.

The new retirement plan calls for a 2-percent-at-50 arrangement for firefighters hired on or after Oct. 4, 2010. The benefit increases for firefighters who work longer, with the maximum being 2.7 percent at age 55. The retirement benefit is calculated using an average of the employee’s salary for the highest consecutive 36 months of employment, rather than the highest consecutive 12-month period.

Under state law, the council can only change benefits for new hires ---- it can't remove benefits from existing employees.

The council also will put a measure on the November ballot amending the city's charter so that the 2 percent plan cannot be increased without voter approval. That measure would require a simple majority to pass.

In addition to the pension plan changes, the contract approved Tuesday contains provisions that increase the annual contributions that firefighters make into the state pension system. Currently, the firefighters pay 1 percent of their salaries into the system each year, and the city picks up remainder of the 9 percent "employee" portion of the costs. The new contract calls for firefighters to pay the full 9 percent.

The contract also calls for no salary increases in 2010.

The changes are expected to save the city $780,000 a year initially. That figure doesn't include the eventual 2-percent-at-50 retirement plan savings, which will occur as the new firefighters retire decades from now.

In the "olive branch" offer that firefighters made in late April, they proposed two alternatives. The first called for a two-year contract with both the 2-percent-at-50 pension proposal and the requirement that the firefighters pay the full 9 percent annual contribution to state retirement plan. That proposal also included a 5 percent raise for firefighters and a provision that the council would not place the pension issue on the November ballot.

The second proposal called for a one-year contract. It didn't ban the ballot measure, but declared that it would apply to all city employees and would restrict both increases and decreases in various benefits without voter approval.

As the city embarks on a new relationship with its firefighters, the association that represents them is going through some changes of its own. The group's President Rick Fisher resigned Sunday, and Vice President Ken Sugahara has taken the job. Fisher couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday. Lawrence, the new vice president, said Fisher decided on his own to resign and was not removed from the office by a vote of the members.

Call staff writer Barbara Henry at 760-901-4072.

CLARIFICATION: Carlsbad pension benefit can increase

This story has been modified to reflect that the 2-percent-at-50 retirement benefit can increase if the employees remain in their job beyond age 50. The maximum benefit is 2.7 percent at age 55. The retirement benefit is calculated using an average of the employee’s salary for the highest consecutive 36 months of employment, rather than the highest consecutive 12-month period.

PORAC

CHAPTER MINUTES

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The April chapter meeting was held at The Vineyard Inn in Lemoore. Chapter President

James Bewley called the meeting to order at 1900 hrs. After self-introductions, Steve Rossi led us in the pledge of allegiance. There was a moment of silence for those officers killed in the line of duty.

Approval of Minutes: President Bewley asked for a motion to approve the minutes of the March 16, 2010 chapter meeting as submitted.

Upon a motion duly made by Jim Henderson, second by Jacky Parks, to approve

The minutes of the March 16, 2010 as submitted. The motion carried.

Financial Report: Treasurer Mike Cavallero reported the balance in the chapter checking account as of March 31, 2010 was $6,519.82. The chapter financial report for the first quarter of 2010 has been submitted to PORAC and we are awaiting our chapter reimbursement check.

Director’s Report: Jacky Parks reported on PORAC’s recent lobbying trip to Washington, DC. They met with Congressmen Dennis Cardoza, George Radanovich, Jim Costa, Devin Nunes and Dan Lungren. Parks reviewed the bills they lobbied for when they met with our congressmen. In addition to COPS and Byrne JAG funding, they addressed HR 235, the Social Security Fairness Act.

James Bewley reported the Executive Committee met on April 12^th prior to Symposium. PORAC will be working closely with POST’s Learning Technology Resources Advisory Council on their training videos and internet courses. Membership has increased by approximately 1,000 members. Bewley reported that PORAC is accepting applications for the new LDF Plan V for RAM (and those retirees who maintain full PORAC membership through their associations) and the plan will go into effect as soon as PORAC has received 1,000 applications.

Legislative Report: The legislative report was covered in the Director’s Report.

PAC Report: PAC Rep James Watson reported on the balances available in the chapter PAC and PIC accounts. Fresno POA will hold interviews for various city, county and state races on April 21^st and April 28^th. He also advised PORAC will hold its annual Legislative Day in Sacramento on Wednesday, May 5^th and asked to attend on behalf of the chapter.

Watson introduced Justin White, candidate for Madera County Board of Supervisors District 2. White told us about his background and that he currently sits on the Chowchilla City Council. He said his major concerns are jobs and water issues, fiscal responsibility and public safety. He has been endorsed by the Chowchilla POA and the Madera DSA. He asked for our support. After his presentation, Bewley asked White to stet out of the meeting. There was brief discussion during which Scott Jackson and Mike Motz spoke highly of Justin White and asked that the chapter endorse him.

Upon a motion duly made by Scott Jackson, second by Jacky Parks, that the

Chapter endorse Justin White for Madera County Board of Supervisors District 2. The motion carried.

Chapter Minutes – 04/20/10

Upon a motion duly by Scott Jackson, second by Eric Schmidt, that the chapter

Donate $1,500 from the chapter PAC to Justin White’s campaign. The motion

Carried.

White was invited backing into the meeting and Bewley told him about the chapter endorsement and donation to his campaign. White thanked us for our endorsement and support.

Phil Wyman, Republican candidate for the 16^th SD, made an unannounced appearance at the chapter meeting. He made a rambling presentation to the chapter, and then left the meeting.

Jacky Parks recommended the chapter send PAC Rep Jim Watson to Sacramento for PORAC’s Legislative Day on May 5^th, the full board meeting on May 6^th and the State POM on May and that the chapter cover his expenses.

Upon a motion duly made by Jacky Parks, second by Steve Rossi, that the Chapter cover expenses to send PAC Rep Jim Watson to Legislative Day, the Board meeting and the State POM in Sacramento from May 5 – May 7, 2010.

The motion carried.

LDF Report: Trustee Andy Schlenker was unable to attend the meeting but a report was sent by e-mail by LDF Administrator Ed Fishman. The report covered several criminal, civil and administrative cases that LDF is dealing with including an update on the BART shooting case. Membership as of February 28^th is approaching 86,000 members and there are now 876 associations in the LDF Trust.

I & B Report: Trustee Tom Sigley was unable to attend the meeting but sent a written report. The IBT met on March 31^st in Sacramento. The trustees discussed the Blue Cross rates for 2011, the trust’s investment policy and finalized the trust agreement with PORAC. They are still working on the upgrade for membership and claims software with the consultant.

There were no vendors present. Cavallero reported he received an e-mail from Beth Smith advising she has accepted another position in AFLAC and will no longer be the chapter representative. Cavallero has spoken with Anna Reed, who said she is working to find another AFLAC representative for our chapter.

RMT Report: Trustee Bill Harbottle was unable to attend the meeting but sent a written report. The RMT is finalizing the merger with Northern California Trust and that will bring Calaveras County DSA into the trust from Region II. They are still looking at hiring a consultant who would be in charge of contacting associations about the RMT.

RAM Report: Mike Cavallero reported RAM membership continues to increase, especially now that LDF’s Plan V is available. As soon as 1,000 retirees sign up for

Chapter Minutes – 04/20/10

Plan V, the plan will be activated. The RAM Committee will meet on Saturday, May 8^th in Sacramento at PORAC HQ.

Association Reports:

Clovis POA: John Willow said the city is claiming a $3 million budget shortfall for FY10-11. Currently department staffing is down to 92 officers from a high last year of 118. They are also carrying 10 officers on long term absences.

Madera DSA: Mike Motz reported they began negotiations on April 19^th. The county is asking for concessions. They are discussing a 16 hour furlough as well as changes in the H & W plan.

Reedley POA: Ray Camacho said they will have their first meeting with the city on April 21^st. Currently the department is authorized 33 officers but they are carrying 6 vacancies. They do not know what concessions the city may ask for but it is likely to include a pay decrease.

Fresno DAIA: Randy Waltz said their MOU was approved by the Board of Supervisors last month with several minor concessions. However, there have been significant fiscal cuts which have resulted in the elimination of various programs such as the Child Abduction Unit. Like all law enforcement agencies, they are being asked to do more with less.

Lemoore POA: Jim Chaney reported Steve Rossi has been promoted Commander. The association is looking forward to working with new leadership that has come from within the department.

Hanford POA: Dean Hoover said they will begin negotiations soon. The city claims to have a budget shortfall that ranges from $750 thousand to $2 million. They are looking for representation in negotiations.

Fresno DSA: Eric Schmidt reported they continue to deal with significant budget. They will be interviewing the candidates for Fresno County Assessor – Recorder.

Fresno POA: Jacky Parks said the city is looking at a deficit of $30 – $34 million and will probably law off approximately 300 employees by July 1^st with between 50 and 58 being civilian employees from the PD. The FPOA has been in informal talks with the city. There will be three general membership meetings on April 26^th where an informal proposal will be presented. If approved by the members (and the city council), it would save the city between $3 and $3.5 million in FY10-11. The H&W premium will increase by $182 per month beginning July 1, 2010 (from $729 to $911). The city pays 80% and the members pay 20%. FPOA has endorsed Tom Berryhill for the 14^th SD. He concluded his report with a brief overview of the recent Big 50 Seminar held at Harvard.

Chapter Minutes – 04/20/10

Fresno Sheriff Sergeants Association: Kevin Smith said they, too, are dealing with the county’s budget issues.

Old Business: None

New Business: None

The next chapter meeting will be on Tuesday, May 18, 2010 in Merced. The location will be in the meeting notice.

President Bewley adjourned the meeting at 2120 hrs.

State Issues

Two-tiered pension plan for most Santa Rosa city workers
Citing the city's dire financial condition, the Santa Rosa city council on Tuesday voted 6-0 to establish a two-tiered pension system for all of its workforce except police and firefighters. Over the objections of a handful of maintenance and utility workers and their union representatives, the council imposed the cheaper pension scheme on new maintenance workers.

S.F. police, fire agree to forgo pay raises

San Francisco police and firefighter union officials reached tentative deals to forgo pay raises as budget deficit, officials said. The firefighters' agreement calls for union members to give up at least Mayor Gavin Newsom seeks concessions from all city workers to help bridge a historic 8 percent in planned wage increases over the next two years, which will save more than $18.5 million in base wage and overtime costs over that period, said Martin Gran, head contract negotiator with the Department of Human Resources. Details of the tentative deal with the Police Officers Association were not immediately available, but officials said it was similar to the firefighters' pact.

Man gets 40 to life for shooting LAPD officer
A man has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for shooting and wounding a Los Angeles police officer in 2008. Prosecutors say 30-year-old Samuel Jackson got the maximum sentence in Superior Court Monday for shooting Officer Owen Berger. Berger was shot in the wrist and in the chest when his partner responded to an early-morning incident in Watts in November 2008. Police officials say the bullet-resistant vest he was wearing saved his life. Jackson was found guilty on May 6 of premeditated attempted murder, assault on a peace officer with a semiautomatic firearm and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Police: Ohio man, son killed Ark. officers
An Ohio man's resentment of authority and run-ins with the law prompted a local sheriff to warn that he may be dangerous if confronted by law enforcement. Years later, it appears the sheriff was right. Authorities said Friday that 45-year-old Jerry Kane Jr. of Forest, Ohio, and his teenage son Joseph Kane fatally shot two Arkansas police officers during a traffic stop Thursday in West Memphis. Father and son were later killed in a shootout. Jerry Kane publicly questioned the government's authority and had a long history with police. Sheriff Gene Kelly in Ohio's Clark County says he warned law enforcement about Kane in July 2004, after Kane complained that a judge "enslaved" him when he was sentenced to six days of community service for traffic violations.

California bill targeting molesters would cost millions
A state corrections department analysis of a bill being considered by California lawmakers has found that mandating life sentences for some child molesters and lifetime parole for others would cost tens of millions of dollars annually after the first decade. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst puts the ultimate tab at hundreds of millions of dollars each year, some of it to build new cells for sex offenders serving longer terms. The projections come as an Assembly committee prepares to consider on Friday whether the state can afford the bill introduced after a paroled sex offender's rape and murder of two Southern California teenagers.

Schwarzenegger's proposal on prison healthcare draws criticism
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal for the University of California and its medical schools to manage healthcare for the state's prison inmates, including via the Internet, received significant criticism at a hearing before the university's regents. Leaders of the union that represents current prison doctors were the most vocal opponents, warning that UC medical staff would face frequently violent patients, higher-than-expected costs and malpractice lawsuits challenging long-distance online diagnoses.

In Closing

I would like to thank the members who took the time to vote for your elected Executive Board and your Board of Directors representing you all as members of the Fresno Deputy Sheriff’s Association.

Electing me as your President, humbles me once again to represent you all to the best of my abilities. I have heard a lot of positives from the membership and community in regards to the job performance I have been giving towards the FDSA. However there is more to build on here at the FDSA. There are many more arenas we need to be involved in so everybody knows what we as Deputy Sheriffs, Dispatchers, CSO’s, ID Techs, Criminalists and Coroners do day in and day out.

The public is very supportive of this department and I plan on building on that support for all of you, to not only make out jobs easier, but give us an untouchable-type of reputation we all deserve. Nobody disagrees; it takes a certain person to be a deputy sheriff, a certain personality, temperament, and way about them. Let me tell you, the public respects that.

Please become involved in some way or another with the FDSA. There is a lot to offer to some part of the Association. Come to a monthly meeting. We will feed you and you will see the types of things we are involved with and how each board member is contributing for you in one way or another. I think you will be impressed.

Take Care and Stay Safe

-Eric

PRESIDENT'S NEWSLETTER

May 5, 2010

President’s Comments:

Times are tough, life is getting more difficult, and people are pinching their pennies. How many times have we heard this over the last couple years? Well reality is setting in for all of us at the Sheriff’s department, if it already hasn’t. We faced a shortfall in the Sheriff’s budget in January of this year. The FDSA stepped up and helped bridge it, keeping us off the table in terms of layoffs to anyone in our association. This FY 10/11 is going to be the most difficult probably anyone has seen at the Sheriff’s Department, or presently on the Board of Supervisors. The FDSA is committed to working through this with the CAO’s office, Auditor Controller, and the Board of Supervisors. I really want to commend the Board of Supervisors for the support they have given the FDSA over time. They have proven strong supporters when it comes to the Sheriff’s department and line level public safety service for the residents in their districts.

The FDSA was organized in 1973 by a group of deputies who wanted to have a little more bargaining power with the County of Fresno. Since the inception and over time, we have developed ourselves into a powerful bargaining unit inside the County of Fresno, a leader in the Central Valley for PORAC, and a political contender with issues that are dealt with. We are here to protect jobs, period. Your board of directors has committed to that and is very diligent in showing that during the initial TOC discussions that occurred in March of 2009 and the latest round of budget cuts in January of 2010. Tough decisions to make take leadership to accomplish. I truly believe the leadership you have representing you as Deputy Sheriffs, Dispatchers, Community Service Officers, ID Techs, Criminalist and Deputy Coroners is making the correct decisions and not hasty short term ones. Be proud of who you have elected to put into those positions.

I want to commend our Baker to Vegas team for their finish in the 2010 Baker to Vegas Relay. FDSA team finished 7^th out 60 in our division, 69^th out of 253 teams overall, but the best and most bragging rights in the over one hour better score than the Fresno Police Department! Those are the bragging rights we like to bring back to Fresno. I want to thank Juan Espinoza as Team Captain and Dave Kurtze for organizing the Baker to Vegas Team for the 11^th consecutive year. I want to also thank the long list of people who volunteer their time, money and equipment to make this race successful each year. The Board of Supervisors recognized the team with a proclamation at the April 13^th meeting. We ran in honor of Wally, and considering how we finished he is smiling down on that.

I am headed to Sacramento to represent you all at the State Capital and at the State Peace Officers Memorial. I will be attending the annual PORAC Lobbying day we do each year under the PORAC umbrella. There are about 5 PORAC sponsored bills that we will be discussing and gaining support for this year. We have all been prepped by our lobbyist, Aaron Read and Randy Perry. These two guys and their staff do incredible things for PORAC members. The strategy is by bringing us in once a year to get the face time with our local state elected officials, puts the officials in the hot seat to hear it from their own local law enforcement constituents. I will have a complete report in June.

LOCAL ISSUES

Sheriff’s Budget

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Budget has been under scrutiny for the last 3 budget cycles. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors is always asking the Sheriff for transparency with her budget, and constantly challenging her numbers and where she spends her money. This issue came to light during a Board of Supervisors’ Meeting in late January 2010, when the Sheriff and her budget director, Steve Forker had to make some tough decisions when it came to where to trim 7.5 million dollars from this current service and fiscal year. A difficult task to do, however with the help of us, FDSA by starting to talk about concessions, started a movement that ultimately affected the entire department from the Sheriff down to the deputies and correctional officers she employs. The exception is Assistant Sheriff Gattie who did not participate in the additional TOC time.

During this Board of Supervisors’ meeting the Sheriff told the board to bridge her budget gap she would need to go through with layoffs of correctional staff. The County Board said “No she is not,” and that forced the Sheriff to sue the Board of Supervisors. The suit is stating the Sheriff has the right per the State Constitution to control the money in her budget as she sees fit. By doing this, she has the authority to lay off whom she see’s fit to make the budget balance at the end of the fiscal year. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 (Poochigian voting in favor of the Sheriff) to challenge the Sheriff in the so-called authority she claims to have. This then makes for an historic court case, where many in the Sheriff Vs Board of Supervisor world in the rest of the 58 counties are watching very closely.

Now when it comes to deleting vacant positions the BOS has the authority to do that, and can fund more positions when the Sheriff requests. Pretty cut and dried. This is a very important decision the FDSA had been following. Had the Judge ruled the opposite way, the deputy sheriff’s may have faced some serious cuts in order to keep the jail facility open. So rest assured for now, the Sheriff is going through with laying off an additional 23 Correctional Officers to make her budget whole for the FY 2009/10.

FUNDRAISING

FDSA BBQ

The FDSA BBQ’s started back up where they left off in October. The menu was the same; tri-tip, rice, beans, salad, roll and a drink for six-dollars! Not too shabby for a sit down or take out lunch. The requests during the “off-season” have been unbelievable for the BBQ’s to start back up.

I want to thank the BBQ crew; Ryan Gilbert, Kelly Mayfield, Vince Frascona, Edward Mayo, Christina Meza, Dora Papion, Tina Ortiz, Jackie Kitchens. Without the help of all of you these BBQ’s would be difficult to do. I thank you again.

Deliveries and pre-orders were very heavy this month and the portions were healthy as well.

Keep your eye out for Wednesday May 30^th 2010. The addition of all three televisions in the building puts some entertainment into the mix of all the conversation that goes on during the lunch hour. I look forward to seeing you all there again in April.

FDSA Building

There have been a few retirement parties held at the building in the month of April. Some retirement parties from two Sergeants within the Sheriff’s Department who left and had their party together. There was a party from a retired FPD motor officer held at the building as well. This building is continuing to be a very good central location for many people we have received many compliments on the restructuring of the bar, and the structure we have brought back to facilitating these events.

I want to really thank Ryan Gilbert for his leadership by taking on the challenge of getting the bar back into shape, and then taking it a step further by really getting out to the public and advertizing what we have to offer. The rentals are picking up due to putting out that we have lowered our prices to members to rent the building and also to the public as well.

FDSA APPAREL/ITEMS FOR SALE

Photos for all are now located on the FDSA website, www.fresnodsa.org Please take a look.

FDSA Polo Shirt	FDSA T-shirt S-XXL	Black compression shirts Tight fight and loose fit	4 different styles of flex-fit hats
$25.00	$15.00 each	$20.00 each	$18.00 each

Aprons	Challenge Coins	FDSA Mugs	Air Support Unit Patch
$18.00 each	$5.00	$10.00	$8.00

LABOR FRONT/BENEFITS

Labor Beat

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

-By Isaac Torres

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 1
Phil Larson

Fresno County Board of Supervisor District 4
Judy Case

Fresno County District Attorney
Elizabeth Eagan

Fresno Sheriff
Margaret Mims

Fresno County Coroner-Public Guardian
David Hadden

Candidate for State Assembly 31st District:
Henry Perea Jr. (D)

Candidate for State Senate 16th District:
Michael Rubio (D)

Fresno Superior Court Judge:

Jim Petrucelli

California State Attorney General:

Alberto Terrico (D)

California State Insurance Commissioner

Michael Villines (R)

The FDSA's Political Action Committee has also interviewed several of the below candidates who are also running for local, state legislative, and federal legislative races. The FDSA's recommendations will be given during the May FDSA board meeting.

Candidates for Fresno County Assessor-Recorder:
Timothy Lemming

Carol Laval

Paul Dictos

Peter Filipe

Candidates for State Assembly 29th district:
Bob Whalen (R)

Linda Halderman (R)

Don McKinney (R)

Michael Esswein (D)

Candidates for State Assembly 30th district:

Fran Flores (D)

Pete Parra (D)

Stephanie Campbell (R)

David ValaDao (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 18th District:
Dennis Cardoza (D) (incumbent)

Michael Berryhill (R)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 19th District:
Jim Patterson (R)

Jeff Denham (R)

Richard Pombo (R)

Larry Westerlund (R)

Loraine Goodwin (D)

Les Marsden (D)

Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives 20th District:
Jim Costa (D) (incumbent)

Steve Haze (D)

Serafin Quintanar (R)

Andy Vidak (R)

Richard Lake (R)

Candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 21st District:

Devin Nunes (R) (incumbent running unopposed)

Pensions

Fresno Bee

EDITORIAL: CalPERS bill faces obstacles

State must put an end to the perks received by 'placement agents.'

Posted at 12:00 AM on Thursday, Apr. 15, 2010

Imagine a job that pays $25,000 a month, plus a guarantee that you would fly first class, and be chauffeured to the finest hotels. And if you landed a deal, your piece of the action would be $2.5 million, minimum.

Indeed, life is sweet for some "placement agents," the middlemen who help investment houses win business from public pension funds. Yet the time has come for California to put a lid on the sugar bowl.

To reduce the potential for kickbacks and corruption, state lawmakers must rein in these behind-the-scenes deal makers and make their dealings more transparent.

But the initial read is not good. Legislation to regulate the worst excesses of placement agents cleared a hurdle by passing the Assembly Public Employees, Retirement and Social Security Committee, but it faces more hearings. And because it changes the Political Reform Act, it must receive a two-thirds vote in both houses.

Four Democrats voted for it, the bare minimum. Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, a Republican from Laguna Nigel, voted against the bill. Assemblyman Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, abstained.

The bill, AB 1743, would require that placement agents register in publicly available filings, like lobbyists. Importantly, the bill would bar placement agents from collecting contingency fees based on success. California lawmakers banned contingency fees for lobbyists 60 years ago, knowing such arrangements are corrupting.

That ban faces stiff resistance from Wall Street. There are other opponents. Former Sen. Richard Polanco was in Sacramento working to weaken the bill, arguing that newer or small-scale money managers, many of them Latinos, need placement agents who receive contingent fees in order to get to pension fund managers.

Polanco certainly has a stake in the outcome. He worked with Alfred Villalobos, the former CalPERS board member who earned more than $60 million in placement agent fees. One Villalobos-Polanco contract with a Wall Street firm included the $25,000 monthly retainer, plus a 1% fee so long as they won a CalPERS commitment worth at least $250 million.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer is leading the charge on the side of transparency. Lockyer knows the bill is in trouble, but has a suggestion. If it stalls, he will push to have CalPERS and the California State Teacher Retirement System halt all business with funds that use placement agents. We commend his attitude.

The fate of AB 1743 will be a test of the Legislature's Democratic leaders, John Perez in the Assembly and Darrell Steinberg in the Senate. Will they side with well-connected placement agents that have brought disgrace upon the state's pension funds? Or will they stand behind the interests of taxpayers and honest, open government?

I included the above article to give the members an idea of what the politicians and public are looking at in regards to public safety pensions. The above article refers to CALPERS just because it is the biggest and bleeding the most.

Fresno County Retirement system is the 1937 Act. We fall under a different type of system from Calpers, but make no mistake ours is under scrutiny as well. So much that they County of Fresno has started to have informal meetings with all of labor to start round tabling a retirement reform committee.

I met with the County on Wednesday April 21 regarding this committee and some informal talks. One positive I believe that came out of the meetings, is it looks like I will be representing safety at the table of this committee. The CAO is running it, and is aspiring to appoint general citizens to it as well as county staff and labor. The biggest benefit to having the FDSA represented on this committee is we are entrenched with PORAC and other labor associations in not so much battling pension reform, but more along the lines of controlling pension reform from the safety side of it. Now I completely understand as does the county that the FDSA does represent general retirement as well. We most likely will be represented at those meetings as well.

I will keep you all in the loop in the coming months when it comes to the meetings we start to have and what the outlook of the committee is interested in dealing with. I know one issue that has already been addressed, is the retirement benefit you are currently receiving; there is no intention of reform to that at this point in time. If the information lends itself too large to just update you on the email or website, I will call a special meeting to inform all of you regarding this.

PORAC

CHAPTER MINUTES

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The chapter meeting was held at the Cattlemens in Selma. Chapter Vice President Jim Henderson called the meeting to order at 1905 hrs. After self – introductions, Vice President Henderson led us in the pledge of allegiance. We observed a moment of silence for those officers killed in the line of duty, especially for:

Deputy Joel Wahlenmaier, Fresno County SD, EOW: February 25, 2010

Officer Javier Bejar, Reedley PD, EOW: March 1, 2010

Deputy Ken Collier, San Diego County SD, EOW: February 28, 2010.

Approval of Minutes: Vice President Henderson asked for a motion to approve the minutes from the February 16, 2010 chapter meeting.

Upon a motion duly made by James Watson, second by Eric Schmidt, to approve the minutes from the February 16, 2010 chapter meeting as submitted.

Motion carried.

Financial Report: Treasurer Mike Cavallero reported the balance in the chapter checking account at the FPDCU as of February 28, 2010 was $7,620.25.

Cavallero advised that he sent floral arrangements on behalf of the chapter to the funerals of Deputy Wahlenmaier and Officer Bejar. The cost was $119.87 for each arrangement for a total cost of $239.74. He asked for a motion to approve the expense.

Upon a motion duly made by Bill Trollinger, second by Jesus Santillan, to approve the expense of $239.74 for the floral arrangements sent to the funerals of Deputy Wahlenmaier and Officer Bejar. The motion carried.

Director’s Report: There was no report for this meeting. James Bewley (Chapter President & FDSA Directory at Large) and Jacky Parks (FPOA President & Director at Large) were in Washington DC on

PORAC’s annual federal lobbying trip. Scott Jackson (Chapter Director & Madera DSA President) was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict.

Legislative Report: There was no report for this meeting for same reason there was no Director’s Report.

PAC Report: PAC Rep James Watson reported on the balances available in the chapter PAC/PIC accounts as February 28, 2010.

He introduced Dr. Linda Halderman, Republican candidate for the 29^th AD. She gave us background information and told us why she is running for the Assembly. She also answered questions from the members.

LDF Report: Trustee Andy Schlenker was unable to attend the meeting but he did send a written report. Secretary Cavallero presented the report which included an updates on criminal, civil and administrative cases. LDF membership is listed at 85,940 as of January 31, 2010. The LDF trustees have approved the

plan to offer retirees firearms coverage for appeal from a denial of a CCW, criminal & civil defense for discharge of a weapon in self defense and criminal defense for charges of illegal weapons possession (HR 218 issues).

LDF panel attorney Kristina Jansen, Mastagni Law Firm, reminded the members of the

Chapter Minutes – 03/16/10problems that can result from using department computers and cell phones for what is generally termed as “inappropriate” e-mails, photos, calls and texting. She also reviewed several cases.

I & B Report: Trustee Tom Sigley was unable to attend the meeting but sent a written report. The IBT has set up a sub – committee to work with a consultant from the Segal Company to set up a new computer program for the LTD plan.

Beth Smith, AFLAC for PORAC, gave an overview of the various plans that AFLAC offers PORAC members.

RMT Report: Trustee Bill Harbottle reported the RMT has over $2 million in assets. They are completing a merger with another RMT in the Bay Area. They are looking at hiring a field representative to work with local associations. At this point, no PORAC associations from Region II are in the RMT.

RAM Report: Committee member Mike Cavallero reported the RAM Committee held a conference call on February 22^nd. The new LDF plan for retirees should be ready to be offered on or around April 1^st. It will take 1,000 retired officers for the coverage to begin. The RAM Committee has tentatively scheduled a meeting for Saturday, May 8^th in Sacramento.

Association Reports:

Fresno DSA: Eric Schmidt spoke about the loss of Deputy Joel Wahlenmaier and its affect on both their department and their association. He thanked everyone, especially Fresno POA and PORAC for all of their help and support.

Fresno POA: Bill Trollinger spoke about the FPOA Companion Officer Program and the help it provided to the members of the Fresno County SD, Fresno DSA, Reedley PD and Reedley POA. He reported the city is projecting a $26.9 million shortfall for FY10-11 and the city has asked to meet informally regarding budget issues.

Hanford POA: Dean Hoover said they are in the final year of their MOU. In October 2009 the city asked the POA to postpone increases for FY09-10 until FY10-11 and also extend their current MOU for one year. The POA declined their request. They are represented by CB&M.

Mariposa DSA: Kevin Packard reported they are still working with the county on their holiday pay issue. Their current MOU expires October 31, 2010 and they should begin negotiations soon.

Reedley POA: Ray Camacho spoke about the devastating loss of Officer Bejar. He thanked everyone for all their help, especially those officers who covered patrol shifts and those dispatchers who worked in communications. He also thanked the FPOA and their companion officers for their assistance as well as PORAC. They are in the first year of a two year MOU and expect the city to ask for concessions. They are represented by Bennett & Sharpe.

Fresno County Probation MA: Gilbert Sanchez reported how the county’s budget shortfall is affecting them. They are represented by Bennett & Sharpe.

Fresno County DAIA: Larry Waggle told us that several years ago they had 85 members. Now they are down to 43 members and the county wants a 13% reduction from all county departments for FY10-11. They have been forced to close several of their units.

Livingston POA: Tyson Perry reported that as of March 1, 2010, Doug Dunford is their new chief of police. The city is facing a huge budget deficit this year. They are a 20 member department, including the chief. The POA is represented by OE3.

Selma POA: Lance Pearce advised us the POA has not had a contract in 5 years, there have been no raises and during this fiscal year, the city has furloughed officers. Their civilian staff at the PD has been reduced by 50% and they now have only 1 CSO. The city continues to face budget deficits. They are represented by Goyette & Associates.

Lemoore POA: They could not attend because their new chief, Jeff Laws, is being sworn in tonight at their city council meeting. Steve Rossi sent Mike Cavallero a written report that summarized their new MOU.

Lemoore POA has two bargaining units, one for officers and one for sergeants. This MOU is a one year deal that expires December 31, 2010. For the second year, there was no raise but there were no takeaways, either. In light of what is going on with so many other associations, they do not feel too badly about this MOU. Now that the new chief has been sworn in, the selection of a new commander, which is the second in command at Lemoore PD, will begin. He asked to convey their sympathy to Fresno DSA and Reedley POA for their tragic losses.

Clovis POA: Jim Henderson reported they have hired one new officer. There was nothing else to report. Chuck Wages spoke to the members about a fund raising opportunity for associations with the VIP Card. He explained it was a local company and their association has been using it for a while. He provided brochures and contact information for those who might be interested.

Old Business: None

New Business: Manuel Flores spoke about the Fresno County Peace Officers Memorial. This year’s event will be held on Tuesday, May 4^th at Courthouse Park in Fresno. The ceremony begins at 12:00 Noon. All chapter members are invited to attend.

Chapter Minutes – 03/16/10

Mike Cavallero suggested the chapter make a donation to the Fresno County Peace Memorial Foundation in honor Deputy Joel Wahlenmaier and Officer Javier Bejar.

Upon a motion duly made by James Watson, second by Jesus Santillan, that the chapter donate $500 to the FCPOMF in honor of Deputy Joel Wahlenmaier and Officer Javier Bejar. The motion carried unanimously.

The next chapter meeting will be on Tuesday, April 20, 2010 in Lemoore. The location will be in the meeting notice.

Vice President Jim Henderson adjourned the meeting at 8:55 PM.

State Issues

Hundreds attend public visitation for Chief Gates
Hundreds of people turned out Monday to pay final respects to former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, whose casket was on display in an auditorium at the department's downtown headquarters. A white hearse ferrying Gates' wooden casket arrived at the LAPD's auditorium in the morning hours, escorted by a phalanx of motorcycle officers. When the doors to the building opened at noon, a line of a few hundred mourners snaked down to a shaded area where members of Gates' family informally received well-wishers. Inside, two white-gloved LAPD officers stood at attention on both sides of the casket, which was partially draped with a United States flag. On a pedestal nearby were Gates' badge and patrol hat, along with a red rose.

Scandals drive Democratic pension reforms
As if their rising cost to state and local governments weren't trouble enough, public pensions also face legislation cracking down on pension boosting, improperly influenced investments and real estate schemes that displace the poor. A whiff of anti-corruption cleanser, or the verbal equivalent, wafted through the Capitol this month. Bills moved to curb the "spiking" of final pay to boost pensions and regulate "placement agents" paid big fees for helping money managers get pension funds.

Unions get head start in taking on Meg Whitman
Labor unions have long accounted for the Democratic Party's ground troops in political campaigns. Their ability to reach members and get workers to the polls has been part of the reason Democrats have enjoyed such electoral success in California over the last decade. This year, spooked by the possibility of running against a multimillionaire or billionaire Republican in the governor's race, Democrat-friendly unions have started communicating their message earlier than ever. Already, 150,000 fliers have been distributed at union job sites accusing former EBay chief Meg Whitman of being bad for California workers.

In lean times, police cuts spark debate over safety
Since January; Tulsa has laid off 89 police officers, 11% of its force. That has pushed the city to the forefront of a national movement, spurred by hard times, to revamp long-held policing strategies. In the crosshairs: community-policing initiatives created over the past two decades, such as having officers work in troubled schools, attend neighborhood-watch meetings and help small-business owners address nuisance crimes like graffiti. Such efforts are popular, and some experts credit them with contributing to the steady drop in the national crime rate since 1991. But after years of expanding and taking on new duties, police chiefs say they have little choice but to retrench.

Public employee pensions under pressure
Across California, state and local leaders are moving to confront the cost of public employee retirement packages - an escalating financial burden that threatens to choke off funding for other government services. Legislation now being debated in Sacramento would curtail pension

benefits to future state employees. Elsewhere, city and county governments are looking at a variety of measures, including raising property taxes to cover shortfalls and reducing payments to retirement funds.

Whitman calls for major changes in California worker pensions
Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman proposed a major restructuring of state worker pensions that she said would dramatically lessen the billions of dollars that cash-strapped California would be required to pay out in future years. Casting blame for the costs in part on the man she will face if she wins her party's nomination in June - former governor and current presumptive Democratic nominee Jerry Brown - Whitman said that pension liabilities are "like a train coming through the tunnel at every single Californian." She said liabilities amounted to almost $15,000 for every household in California.

Audit: Calif. wasted millions on drugs for inmates
A report says California wasted at least $13 million last year through inefficiencies in the way it delivers drugs to prison inmates. The report by David Shaw, the inspector general for the state corrections department, says many costly prescriptions are discarded because of poor inventory record-keeping. Others are lost when inmates are transferred or released from prison.

East Bay police chief calls for open-carry ban
An East Bay police chief will be in Sacramento on Wednesday to advocate for a bill that would crack down on the "open carry" movement, in which gun enthusiasts say they're exercise their Second Amendment rights and protecting their personal safety by carrying unloaded firearms in plain sight in public places. Emeryville Police Chief Ken James said he'll be representing the California Police Chiefs Association, which has thrown its support behind AB 1934, the bill being unveiled this week by Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, D-San Diego. Saldaña amended the bill last week so that it would, subject to exceptions, make it a misdemeanor to openly carry an unloaded handgun in specified public areas. Open-carry advocates say it's a further abridgment of their Constitutional rights.

Violent parolees go unsupervised under Calif. law
More than 250 state prison inmates freed without supervised parole under a new California law were convicted of crimes considered violent or threatening, according to prison records obtained as part of an inquiry by state lawmakers. A handful are sex offenders. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state corrections officials said the law, passed last year, was designed to improve public safety by concentrating parole supervision on the most dangerous felons. Allowing those convicted of lesser offenses to go unsupervised after their release would mean fewer people being sent back to prison for parole violations, reducing the inmate population and saving the state money.

In Closing

On Wednesday April 21^st 2010, I attended a benefit dinner for Joel Wahlenmaier and Javier Bejar that was held at India’s Oven at the corner of Ashlan and Marks in Fresno. This was hosted by the East Indian Chamber of Commerce. They are somewhat of a newer organized group, but all felt they wanted to do something and contribute to the officer’s memorial funds.

The event was free to anyone who wanted to attend, however any donation was graciously accepted for those who wanted to donate. I want to thank those in attendance from the Sheriff’s Department; Sheriff Mims, Kevin Smith and his wife, Tracy Morgan and her daughter, Jasvir Mattu, and Chris Curtice. There were members from the Reedley Police Department in attendance as well, Chief Wright, Officer Cesar Gonzalez who escorted Miriam Bejar to the event.

I was asked to speak on behalf of the Wahlenmaier family and representing all the members of the FDSA. I really didn’t have anything planned to say, which isn’t too off of normal when I speak at different events and to the media. More times than not I can deal with whatever the issue may be and discuss it in an open forum or in front of the news camera. The night of this event for whatever reason, it was very difficult to get the words out. I looked out over a crowded restaurant of about 120 people, very few who I know and talk about my friend Joel and represent his family. I guess it wasn’t really until this time did it sink into me that he is not coming back and I almost became as a loss for words. However, I did get through it and the crowd was very pleased with what they heard.

I guess with everything going on in the last couple months regarding the incident and every aspect I have been dealing with, wearing two hats; one as your president representing all of you and the other as a friend of Joel had finally caught up to me. I have to accept the fact that this is real and deal with it. Maybe it is something I haven’t wanted to do up until I had to get up and almost eulogize my friend Joel Wahlenmaier. I know one thing, life is precious and we all need to live it one day at a time and enjoy it. There is no need to be negative during our days.

Stay Safe

-Eric