Milestones
By Miles H. Barber

What are we waiting for?

Does our City Council think the good fairy is going to arrive in Santa Clara with a bag of gold pixie dust to sprinkle over our structural budget deficit?

While some very crafty maneuvering (furloughs) has plugged the budget holes for this fiscal year, we are on track for some serious hurdles next year and the ones to follow.

Pension costs are a priority since they are accelerating like a Ferrari.

It doesn't appear that anyone wants to talk about this issue and what's to come. Worse, no one has even proposed the unthinkable.

Public sector managers and union members are hostile towards criticism of the tyrannosaurus Rex salaries and benefits we are doling out for our public employees.

Certainly there is not a lot of support from the public sector to revamp much of anything other than to provide further increases.

State law has been modified over the past 20 years to provide virtually bullet proof vesting of union member's employment, salary and benefits, regardless how good or how bad they perform.

While this may be the law, it is not right. It is not right morally or ethically.

Where else do you have legalized extortion other than through collective bargaining?

Unions were created at a time when employers were treating employees like slaves. Working conditions were intolerable and compensation pitiful.

That was then and this is now. Unions have become so powerful they have become the tyrants of the hi-tech age replacing industrial robber barons of the last century. They run our municipalities, our state and Federal governments either directly or indirectly. They support and elect their representatives and call in the favors "owed" them by their elected candidates.

At least in football the owners had the option to do a "lock out" until the unions agreed to a more rational and reasonable contract.

Taxpayers do not have that option.

What is incredulous is that we continue to elect and reelect the same candidates who have supported this union give away mentality.

In our home town many citizens are asking, "How are we going to fix this?"

Has our Council addressed pension reform? No, though it has been on their priority list for the last half year. Has our Council looked at options other than furlough days to reduce employee expenditures? Not yet.

When you consider that Mayor Matthews, Councilwoman McLeod, and Councilman Kolstad are union members, and Moore, Gillmor and Mahan are union supporters it should be no surprise we have little interest in changing the food chain.

With Mahan and Matthews both participating in the CalPers city retirement plan, there is an ethical conflict of interest. How can they remain objective on pension reform when they are recipients of the benefit?

While we may have limited influence to resolve the state budget crisis, our Council has the power to do the right thing for Santa Clara.

The time to start fixing our next year's budget issues is yesterday.

Miles H. Barber can be reached at Scweekly2011@yahoo.com