Dear City Council: Fix It

Like many cities across the country, and particularly in the State of California, the City of Long Beach management and elected officials have recently worked through the budget for the coming year to cover a multi-million dollar gap between revenue and expenses. Putting a lot of faith in future negotiations with the various labor groups that represent most city workers, approximately $20 million was cut from projected expenses to balance the budget. Now if they can just figure out how to reduce another $20 million for the 2010-2011 budget and yet another $20 million for the 2012-2013 budget.

One assumes that we can continue these budget deficit projections ad infinitum given that one of the major expenditures has not been addressed: pension and benefit reform for City employees. With each budget and each contract negotiation this issue has been passed over and left for some other City Council. It appears the time is right for this City Council to address this issue, if only those sitting in the seats have the political courage to stand strong and address the issue.

Restructuring public employee pensions and benefits requires stamina, patience and commitment to an outcome. Politically the public employee unions are highly sought allies when candidates are running races because of their ability to pour resources, not just cash but bodies to man phone banks and knock on doors, into those whom they support. In Long Beach a tremendous number of city employees live in the City and are voters adding a bonus for candidates not just of financial support but of actual votes. It is rather incestuous the relationship between our local elected officials and those who work for them once elected, and without entering that relationship getting elected in Long Beach is extremely difficult.

Then there is the next level of politics: State office. In Long Beach to get elected to the California Assembly or Senate two things must happen: 1) you must receive support from the unions, public and private so you can 2) win the Democratic primary. If you achieve (1) you will achieve (2) and you will then win the general election. Happens every time as our city is appropriately gerrymandered and loyal to the Democratic Party to ignore any part of the general election with the exception of the (D) after a candidate's name.

To quickly recap: successful candidacies in Long Beach politics are heavily dependent on endorsements and support from unions.

Union leaders are not running out of their offices to meet officials for the purpose of restructuring the pensions and benefits of their members--after all they are elected as well. In fact getting them to sit down for the specific purpose of such a restructuring negotiation is extremely difficult. But that is exactly what needs to occur in Long Beach (or fill in the blank with your California city, county or just say California).

Politically Long Beach appears to have an excellent window of opportunity for significant restructuring of pensions and benefits to occur in all the city contracts. Looking at the upcoming elections, who is being termed out and prospects for future office, the timing is now for members of City Council to address this issue without a majority of the council having to fear political retribution from the unions hampering their political careers. Let's take a look at the Mayor and nine City Council Districts:

Mayor Bob Foster has already begun his fund raising for a re-election campaign, while anything can happen and he, like all mayors and politicians, has his detractors, any candidate will have an extremely hard time unseating him. During an interview session I was part of for the Long Beach Post last year, Mayor Foster indicated he wanted to tier the pension system for new employees and have them contribute more to their pensions and benefits. He is on board to take on the unions over this issue--so he said and I will take him on his word.

1st District Robert Garcia has a very bright and long political future ahead of him. His campaign to win the special election for his seat was almost flawless and he won handily. He is up for re-election in 2010 and it is difficult to see how any candidate will defeat him. Garcia's challenge is going to be what route does he want his political career to take? Stay in Long Beach and run for Mayor when Foster is term limited out? Go after a statewide office? Take on Laura Richardson for Congress? My outlook is he takes the City Council to Mayor race, using his next term on council to continue to build his support and influence through the city. Where does this put him on restructuring pensions and benefits? Garcia has as much influence or power in his short term in office as anyone on the Council, he can very well afford to spend some political capital and pursue aggressive reform. His district has some of the greatest needs for programs and assistance from the city for his constituents, freeing up funds from future budgets that would be going to such programs is in his and their best interest. I put Garcia in the "yes" column for reform.

2nd District Suja Lowenthal is at a bit of a crossroads and whatever her future political plans may be I have not heard. Will she run against her ex-mother in-law for Assembly? Will she run for her ex-father in-law's seat if he is elected Lieutenant Governor? Or will she serve out her term limits and return to private life working at Cal State Long Beach. It is doubtful she can take on and beat Bonnie Lowenthal who has years of relationships with the organizations and groups needed to win. Also in doubt is her ability to capture Alan Lowenthal's supporters, who would be needed to win any primary for State Senate. Her divorce from Judge Dan Lowenthal has created a rift between her and the tight Lowenthal clan, which frees Suja Lowenthal to aggressively pursue contract reforms with public employees. Will she? Like Garcia, her district is in as much or more need of the funding that would be freed up with such reform, I am uncertain however if she would be willing to enter the fray. I put Lowenthal on the fence.

3rd District Gary DeLong publicly stood up to the Long Beach Police Officers Association during last week's City Council meeting casting the lone vote against a contract revision with the LBPD officers. His reason was that pension and benefit reforms were not addressed, because of this he did not support the contract since in his opinion the negotiations did not go far enough. Facing re-election in 2010 and then being termed out, and it being doubtful he will seek another office, DeLong is on record to fight for aggressive reform of employees' benefits and pensions.

4th District Patrick O'Donnell is a member of a union, his brother who passed away several years ago was a member of the LBPOA, his orientation is pro-worker. This would lead one to conclude he would be against any restructuring of the contracts and putting more of the pension and benefit costs on the employees. Politically however O'Donnell has not much to lose by working on such reform. He is termed out after this cycle, unless he runs a write in campaign he will not be needing political support from the unions. While there were rumors before he may run for statewide office, looking at the seats available and when they become available the timing may not be right for O'Donnell. While he can see the benefits of reform, his DNA may be such that any support might be luke-warm and pursuit of aggressive reform may be out of the question. I put O'Donnell on the fence waiting to see what comes to council before strongly committing, if he ever strongly commits, to any reform plans.

5th District Gerrie Schipske is a liberal up for re-election in a pretty conservative district. She has strong ties to labor, see her employment by the teacher's union as one example, and has fought Mayor Foster on many issues. Schipske has had very good political instincts in picking her battles and issues that play well at home on the Eastside for her constituents and is not afraid to be confrontational downtown. Like O'Donnell her DNA puts her at odds of asking the workers to give up anything in a contract, much less dip into their own pockets to pay for pensions and benefits. However, she is up for re-election in a district where such reform would be popular. Put her on the fence as she sees which way the winds are blowing. Her future political career versus short term re-election.

6th District Dee Andrews has twice defeated a strong labor candidate to win elections to City Council. As with Garcia in the 1st and Lowenthal in the 2nd, Andrews' 6th District has significant needs of any city programs to assist its residents. With no re-election in 2012 Andrews is in a great position to take a lead on pension reforms and show his residents and the rest of the city that the priorities for the council should be citizens first and employees second. Will Andrews pick up the staff and lead on this? He can but we will see. I will rate Andrews as favorable to reform.

7th District Tonya Reyes Uranga is termed out in 2010, which would put her in a position to support strong reform efforts as he political future is blocked by incumbents and term limit math. However Uranga's husband is running for her seat against some very good competition in the 2010 election. Politically Uranga's move is to fight any pension or benefit reform to curry the good graces of the unions for her husband. This move goes entirely with her political career and ideology so count on stiff resistance from lame duck Uranga for any reforms.

8th District Rae Gabelich was re-elected in 2008 with no opposition on the ballot. She is out of office on term limits in 2012 and unless she mounts a write-in campaign her political career ends there, with the possible exception of education boards. When she was elected in 2004 she beat incumbent Rob Webb with the support of the police and fire unions, but has the payback ended? Gabelich is not a standout on the council, with the exception of any airport issue she is rarely heard from and is not one to make any radical proposals. Her position on the issue is hard to gauge and while she has no negatives to push for aggressive reforms other than perhaps her personal ideology, it is difficult to see her taking a strong position on the issue. Put her on the fence depending on what any reform package looks like.

9th District Val Lerch is out of office on term limits in 2010 and running a campaign for write in votes. His competition is Dan Pressburg and Brad Shore. Shore has been very active in his campaign and has picked up some important endorsements. Does Lerch need the city unions in order to be successful in his write in bid? Does it matter? If the unions come out early and endorse Shore then we can expect Lerch to be more aggressive in pursuit of pension reforms. Lerch may aggressively pursue this path without regard to such endorsements as he does have a strong grasp of the long term impact of the current pension and benefit packages on our city and future budgets. Should his opponent(s) publicly oppose any reform Lerch can paint them as in the pocket of the unions and working not for the benefit of the constituents but of the unions. I put Lerch down for pressing for reforms.

So that is my read on the current council and mayor. The votes and political power are there to stare down the unions and use the advantage of another deficit budget that could force layoffs next year, and the year after, and the year after...to negotiate considerable reforms in the city contributions to employee pension and benefit packages. A majority of votes are available where the individuals will experience very little long term fall out to impact their future political careers making this the perfect time for any significant restructuring of the contracts with the city unions. While it will not be easy and there will be plenty of nasty things said about members of council and staff, in the long run doing what is right rarely is easy. And the right thing to do for the future of our city is to re-negotiate the contracts the city pays all of its workers to reduce city contributions and increase employee contributions to pensions and benefits.

The timing is right but do our politicians have the strength and courage to do what is best for our future?

.

Political Calculus

There are those who follow politics the way others follow baseball and box scores, there are hits, runs and errors. These days in the City of Long Beach, and the State of California, one needs not a box score but a calendar. For any politician, or anyone thinking of becoming a politician in Long Beach, a calendar is the most important tool in the box; well besides financing from unions.

Term limits are the root cause of our state's political and budgetary problems. While term limits in the city create problems locally, even our city budget issues can be traced directly to the term limits for elected officials in Sacramento. Enacted in 1990 by voters, primarily to get then Speaker Willie Brown out of office, members of the State Assembly are limited to three terms of two years each and members of the State Senate are limited to two terms of four years each.

Further compounding the problems caused by term limits on the state level has been the drawing of legislative districts that create "safe seats." In the last election voters passed one of the few worthwhile propositions we have seen in the past two decades, Proposition 11 took the ability to redraw legislative districts out of the hands of the legislature and gave the power to a panel appointed by a commission of auditors. If the Prop 11 re-districting commission works as voters hope then after the 2010 census our state's legislative districts will be redrawn to more accurately reflect population and geographic boundaries than political party boundaries. However, big however, the changes will not be in effect until the 2012 state elections at the earliest.

Virtually every seat in the California Assembly and California Senate is a "safe seat". Our Bixby Knolls abode sits in the 55th Assembly District and the 27 Senate District, it does not really matter who the elected representatives are because they have been and will be Democrats due to the districts each being over 65% registered Democrat. So while we have term limits for those currently in office, what we have is a revolving door of the same person in a different body always in the Assembly and the Legislature.

Everyone knows when a seat will become available, and everyone knows who will get elected. In all but 3 of the Assembly and Senate seats whoever has a (D) next to their name on the ballot in November will win the election. In the other seats the winner of the Republican primary will win the election. So if you live in the Bixby Knolls area your Assembly representative, Wayne Furutani who was elected in a special election in 2008 will be leaving office in 2016 (finish his special election term then finish his two terms under term limits).

Of greater interest locally is when will Bonnie Lowenthal be termed out of office following her election to the State Assembly in 2008? Following her re-election in 2010 (and with the safe districts how can she not?) Lowenthal is termed out of her seat. And already individuals are lining up to take a run at her seat which overlaps parts of the both the Long Beach 1st City Council District and the Long Beach 7th City Council District. If my map reading and knowledge of home addresses is correct, this confluence of term limits and current district boundaries presents a 2014 showdown between two very bright up and comers in the Democratic Party.

Earlier this month Robert Garcia ran a perfect campaign on the Obama blueprint and won a special election for the Long Beach 1st Council District (filling the seat vacated by Bonnie Lowenthal). Garcia was attacked by the local Democratic Party because he is a "newcomer" to the party, but make no mistake Garcia's politics are very aligned with the Democratic majority in the region. Everything about Garcia makes him star material for the Democrats, born in South America, immigrating with his parents as a young child, received amnesty under President Reagan, left the Republican Party, Hispanic, homosexual, working on a PhD, incredibly bright and articulate and handsome to boot; Garcia is a great political package and he has a political future beyond the Long Beach city council. Garcia will be finishing his first term, presuming he wins his re-election in 2010, which he will by landslide, when Lowenthal is termed out of office in 2014.

Further uptown Long Beach City Council 7th District Representative Tonia Reyes Uranga is being termed out of office in 2010 and her husband Roberto Uranga was a stated and obvious candidate to keep this seat under family control. Uh, not so fast. You see the 1st District is not the only geographic area of the state with young, intelligent and political savvy individuals. A few days after Garcia won the election for the 1st District, James Johnson announced his candidacy for the 7th Council Seat in 2010.

Johnson gets a complete breakdown of his experience in the City of Long Beach on the Long Beach Report, while I am generally not a huge fan of the site's primary contributor his history on Johnson taken in context is pretty thorough. Johnson is very intelligent and also a rising star in the Democratic Party. He apparently is also good at math as if he wins the 7th District Council seat he will be ending his first term when....Bonnie Lowenthal is termed out of office.

Now there is a chance that the 54th Assembly District Boundaries could be redrawn before the 2014 election, but with the natural border of the 710 Freeway on the western edge of part of the district any redrawing will probably include the home bases of both Garcia and Johnson. Looking beyond the Assmebly both are in the same California State Senate District as well as the same Congressional District.

Because of term limits both these intelligent young men know what is avaiable politically in 2014, know their best chance of winning the prize of the Assembly is to have experience on the City Council to help boost their fund raising and friend making, and know that even with re-districting their district will not change much demographically--it will still be solidly Democrat. Further, both being bright they know that incumbents within the party are extremely difficult to beat so they must win in 2014 to continue their political futures.

So sports fans, grab some popcorn and a lawn chair. The race for the 7th District Council Seat in Long Beach is a race for much more than just that seat. Due to political calculus and term limits it is also a race to set up opponents in 2014 between two of our city's brightest young men with equally bright political futures...potentially.

Long Beach 1st City Council District Endorsement

Some time ago I spoke with Robert Garcia and asked him if he was going to run for the 1st District Council seat in Long Beach; at the time Bonnie Lowenthal still held the seat and had made no announcement concerning her pursuing the seat she now holds in the California Assembly. Garcia, in his affable manner, gave a chuckle and said something to the effect of, "We'll see what the future holds." I knew then he would pursue the position when it became available. Not long after that Garcia contacted several friends and colleagues and indicated he would be running for the seat, either if Lowenthal (Bonnie) was elected to higher office and vacated the seat, or when she would be termed out. At that time I told Garcia I supported him.

My relationship with Garcia goes back several years to when he participated in the Leadership Long Beach program, at the time working as the assistant to my friend Gina Rushing, President of St. Anthony High School in Long Beach. As I came to know him better through the years my first impressions of Garcia were hardened, he is very bright, he is extremely friendly, he cares about Long Beach, he is a great guy and a good man. All of these are great character traits, ones we want in our friends and ideally our leaders; but when it comes to electing our policy makers good character, while important, should not be our sole determining factor.

Last week I saw news that the union that represents approximately 4,000 of the employees of the City of Long Beach (International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers --IMA) was interviewing the candidates for the Long Beach 1st District Council seat for the purposes of making an endorsement. As part of the process the IMA was requiring candidates to sign a "pledge" (posted here on candidate Rick Berry's site) which among other items has the signer to pledge to support the non-democratic process of "card check" to establish unions, and to encourage and support unionization of businesses in the city. By signing the pledge an individual is aligning him- or herself with the union's ideology and practices, essentially forming an alliance with the union. Once signed it seems the union would have a right to use the pledge as an instrument at a later date to influence, or encourage, an elected individual to stand by their word and signature--whether they endorsed that individual or not. Robert Garcia signed this pledge, and therefore agreed to align with the IMA and those principles laid out in its pledge.

Because of his signing of this pledge, along with his solicitation of the IMA endorsement to accompany the endorsements he had previously received from both the Fire and Police Associations in Long Beach, I cannot support Garcia's candidacy for the 1st District seat.

The City Council is the employer for the City of Long Beach, while the office of the City Manager negotiates the contracts with the various unions and individuals, ultimately it is the City Council that approves contracts and budgets that are impacted by those agreements. As such members of council, and members of the city negotiating team(s), must have an adversarial relationship with those whom they employ to ensure they are doing their job: negotiate the best possible position for the City of Long Beach and its residents. Members of council are not there to represent and work for the employees of the city, they are not to negotiate and approve contracts that in the best interests of the employees, they are there to represent the voters and citizens of Long Beach and negotiate and approve contracts that are in the best interest of those citizens.

By accepting union funds for campaigns and pandering to them for political endorsements (which come with volunteers and free campaign mailers, phone banks and other campaign efforts) candidates are aligning with the employees and tacitly telling the citizens when it comes time to vote their interests lie with the employees not the citizens. The majority of our current council, and previous councils, have had these same endorsements, and voted for budget after budget increasing salaries and benefits that have strapped our city financially. It is time to break the cycle and not elect the candidate with the city employee union’s support.

The political history of our city shows a stepping stone of city council members creating labor-friendly legislation and votes subsequently getting support and contributions from statewide labor organizations to win their seats in Sacramento. From Lowenthals (Alan and Bonnie), to Oropeza to Richardson those who have the backing of the labor unions win elections--just ask Jenny Oropeza who lost her bid for Congress because of one vote in Sacramento that was against the unions’ wishes; they then supported Richardson with significant donations and she won the seat.

Political calculus and term limits suggest that Garcia is set up perfectly to run for Lowenthal's (Bonnie) seat in the Assembly in eight years when both are termed out, if elected, and can do so with the support of the labor unions--if he plays his cards right. With a very bright political future can Garcia not afford to keep his eye on future donations from the single biggest predictor of election victory in Long Beach, labor union support?

Long Beach, like the State of California, is facing serious financial deficits – deficits which will require cuts in programs, funding of projects and employment costs. Long Beach cannot afford more members of council who are beholden to their employees for their offices--we must have independent members of council if we are to solve our financial problems.

Because he did not sign the pledge, and also because of his views on the purpose of City government, the ideas he has to improve our fiscal standing and his relative independence from interest groups in the city, I endorse Rick Berry for Long Beach 1st Council District.
I encourage those in the 1st Council District to show the rest of the city that "change" really is what will happen in this election--vote for the candidate who is not like your previous member of council, is not beholden to the same special interests that directly benefit from the budget he will be voting on, is willing to challenge the status quo at City Hall. Vote for Rick Berry for 1st District City Council.

There are those cynics who will feel my endorsement of Berry and not Garcia is somehow connected to my leaving the Long Beach Post. Let me assure you the two are unrelated, I have had no conversations or communication with Garcia about the Long Beach Post since perhaps late November. This decision was made after, and independently of my decision to leave the Long Beach Post.