The Voice of OC is an online news blog funded almost entirely by the Orange County Employees Association, which is headed by Nick Berardino – a very well paid union boss.
For some reason the Voice of OC has developed an interest in the compensation and benefits of the Santa Ana City Council and Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido.
I took a look at their compensation. Click here to see the information provided by the City of Santa Ana. Pulido only makes $36,913 a year, as a part-time Mayor. The average household income in Santa Ana is over $54,000 a year, by comparison.
The Voice of OC slammed Pulido for getting health benefits from both the City of Santa Ana and the OCTA, which he serves as a Board Member. But the OCEA is backing a union member named John Leos for the Anaheim City Council. Won’t he be a double-dipper too?
And what about SAUSD Trustee Audrey Yamagata-Noji? She is going to make somewhere between $200K and $300K a year in pension benefits, paid by us, the taxpayers! Why isn’t the Voice of OC going after her?
The truth is that Berardino is having his Voice of OC reporters attack Pulido for purely political reasons. Why the County employee’s union would be going after a local Mayor is a good question. I guess Berardino prefers Pulido’s opponent, lawyer Alfredo Amezcua.
Amezcua walked away from his last elected position, as a member of the RSCCD Board of Education. So Berardino is opting to go with a quitter.
And Amezcua burned the investors who put their money in his Santa Ana Business Bank, as we wrote about earlier today.
But the worst part of this story is that Berardino is the one who created the Orange County pension crisis, according to Supervisor John Moorlach, who wrote:
He negotiated a retroactive retirement benefit enhancement called “2.7% at 55″ that is being paid for by all employees, including me. What does this mean? We have a union leader that has given his members a massive debt! It was $2.7 billion in December. It’s probably $4.5 billion today.
Click here to read more about how Berardino created the pension crisis here in Orange County.
Berardino is the last one who should be crying about benefits! He is the king of wasting tax money! Maybe he should pay more attention to not ripping off Orange County’s taxpayers and stay out of Santa Ana politics…
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Art, you've got some good points and bad points. First of all, Nick did not create the pension problem. He might of been the head negotiator, but the Board of Supervisors are the ones that approved it. They should have had the balls to say hell no! However, they did not do this. Secondly, as a part-time mayor, part of his responsibilities as mayor (same goes for other members of the city council and Board of Supervisors) is to sit on these other boards and commissions to represent their districts. The Mayor sits on about 10 other boards/commissions and makes a great deal of money doing it (probably about $400-800 per board per month. Add them all together, and throw in all the perks associated with each board ie he gets a car from AQMD and therefore, gets to pocket the car allowance that the City gives him, and he makes out like a bandit! Lastly, the Voice should be making a much louder cry for the rat in their own backyard - John Williams, Public Administrator, who gets a full array of pay and benefits, the whole while tanning his a$$ in Floriday under the pretence of attending conferences for the South Orange County Community College District (who also dishes out another $14K+ for benefits in addition to what he gets from the County). But I am sure this is all a big misunderstanding as well.
Outrageous,
I agree that the Supervisors who approved Berardino's pension scheme have egg on their faces, but it was his scheme after all.
I did some more digging tonight and found out that another reason why the Voice has it in for Pulido is former State Senator Joe Dunn, who sits on their board. Apparently he is still mad that Pulido kept the 4th District Court of Appeals here in town. Dunn wanted to move it to Irvine.
And yes, the Voice is MIA with regard to Williams and many other creeps. They only go after folks that Berardino and Dunn are mad at.
Until now, I have strongly advocated for reducing pension formulas for FUTURE years of service for CURRENT (as well as new) workers ...... a VERY unpopular position in the eyes of those riding the Civil Servant gravy train.
I now believe the likelihood of this happening (soon enough and with sufficient formula reductions) is so low that a much better direction, and perhaps the ONLY way to avoid the financial disaster bearing down on communities throughout the nation is to OUTSOURCE 90+%of all Civil Servant positions.
The CRITICAL CRITICAL CRITICAL need is to STOP the further growth of the pension liability from the excessive pension formulas granted EXISTING employees, and the ONLY way to do this quickly and VERY effectively is OUTSOURCING.
And guess what … it's ALREADY been tested … and the sky didn’t fall in … and the residents of Maywood, CA seem very pleased with the results of outsourcing 100% of their employees. Read all about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/business/20maywood.html?pagewanted=2