On Tuesday, the city council brought back for discussion the city’s Urban Forest Management Program, to discuss how tree services would be maintained in the face of cutbacks and a transition to more heavily utilize the West Coast Arborist services, which has a contract with the city on a per tree basis.
The focus of that discussion, and for the most part rightly so, was predicated on the notion of maintaining current levels of service in the face of the city cutting costs by going away from in-house staff and toward contracted services by an external group.
One of the points that was raised by Councilmember Lucas Frerichs was to look at whom we contract with and determine whether we can get local companies to fulfill those duties, under the belief that those who are more affiliated with the city would have a higher stake in the process.
City Attorney Harriet Steiner noted that this was something that could be done as the city opens the contract up for competitive bidding through an RFP/RFQ process.
Once again, the city has focused on maintaining the provision of services.
City Manager Steve Pinkerton has argued, “Citizens of Davis are not expected to see a decrease in service, but contrarily may in fact see an increase in service levels since we do not expect to have the downtime that the City has previously experienced due to employee vacations or illness.”
Toward that end, Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk argued, “We have neglected our tree canopy and it’s important to restore some services in that area to really make an effort to maintain those trees.”
“It has become clear as Steve [Pinkerton] noted that there are real efficiencies there, no frill cost savings there, I recognize that,” he said. “It seems like we have the ability even with increasing services and trying to reinvest in our tree canopy that we can still save money overall.”
Nevertheless, there seemed to be something missing from this discussion. The city in these lean times absolutely needs to look at the provision of city services and determine areas where costs can be cut. The city argues here, and made a fairly convincing case on Tuesday night, that they can both cut costs and increase services.
But is outsourcing the way we want to eventually go?
That is my major criticism of this effort. There has been no discussion about the overarching values and philosophy of governance and the provision of services. Instead, we seem to have a mish-mash of interlocking seemingly individual policy decisions based on what areas we can cut costs from immediately.
Perhaps the council retreat will be a time in which the council can slow things down and have a discussion.
There are clearly times when outsourcing is the best use of resources. Those times include specialties that an outside firm can provide that you cannot perform in-house. They include perhaps economies of scale, where the city’s ability to provide a service will be markedly more expensive do to the relatively low volume of calls for service.
It is not clear that we have set a policy on outsourcing city services. Some clear examples would be the use of a contract city attorney who can rely on the expertise and infrastructure of her larger firm to provide the support work necessary to carry out the duties. Whereas if the city brought an in-house city attorney in, they would have to hire an assistant and also contract to outside areas for specific areas of the law for which the city attorney might not be an expert.
Another example might be the water project, where you hire outside companies and consultants who specialize in the water project with expertise that your in-house staff may lack.
However, at the same time, the city increasingly appears to be relying on contracted workers to perform low-level basic maintenance services. Is that where the city wants to be saving money? Or is that an area where the problem is that the city still has not fixed its labor contracts?
No one bothered to ask the critical question – why is it that West Coast Arborists can perform tree maintenance more cost-efficiently than the city?
There is no doubt that the city believes it can get the same services – actually they are arguing for better services for less money by outsourcing labor – but they have never discussed why that is the case.
We are not opposed to the city coming up with creative ways to save marginal amounts of money. We understand that putting together a number of relatively small savings can add up to significant savings in a short time.
But at the same time, we need to focus on the big picture first and that was missing on Tuesday night. There was a good discussion of provision of tree trimming services, but no discussion on the city’s policies with regards to outsourcing and contract labor, and no discussion of the kinds of structural issues that we need to fix.
But here’s another question that perhaps we ought to think about – if we have a tree trimmer we pay $53,000 to and then hire a company that pays its tree trimmers far less, then it stands to reason that either (A) we are paying our tree trimmer way too much or (B) we are exploiting the labor of someone who is being vastly underpaid in the private sector. To me that means we need to fix our contracts first, and then figure out where we need additional cuts second.
A few years ago, then-Councilmember Lamar Heystek instituted a living wage policy whereby contracted laborers would have minimum guidelines for their labor force.
The Vanguard is absolutely committed to reducing the cost of the city doing services, but it has always focused its efforts on two things: (A) the structure of labor contracts, and (B) those employees who are paid large amounts of money in compensation.
The idea has never been to cut costs by exploiting cheap labor compensated in amounts that we either cannot or will not pay in-house.
Does that make it more difficult for us to balance our books? Perhaps. But if it were easy, anyone could do it. I expect, in Davis, that we can find a way to be sustainable while not exploiting labor. It is a fine balance, but it can be done.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“No one bothered to ask the critical question – why is it that West Coast Arborists can perform tree maintenance more cost-efficiently than the city?”
Because the answer is obvious. Pinkerton and the council are sending a clear message to employees that they are overcompensated and if they don’t play ball the City will do what it has to do to bring down costs.
“Because the answer is obvious. Pinkerton and the council are sending a clear message to employees that they are overcompensated and if they don’t play ball the City will do what it has to do to bring down costs.”
Exactly Toad, and it’s about time.
It is about time, but I would prefer we create an overarching policy rather than attempting to deal with this in a piecemeal fashion that is likely to have unintended consequences down the road.
[quote]Because the answer is obvious. Pinkerton and the council are sending a clear message to employees that they are overcompensated and if they don’t play ball the City will do what it has to do to bring down costs.[/quote]
Well said!
[quote]The Vanguard is absolutely committed to reducing the cost of the city doing services, but it has always focused its efforts on two things: (A) the structure of labor contracts, and (B) those employees who are paid large amounts of money in compensation.
The idea has never been to cut costs by exploiting cheap labor compensated in amounts that we either cannot or will not pay in-house.
Does that make it more difficult for us to balance our books? Perhaps. But if it were easy, anyone could do it. I expect, in Davis, that we can find a way to be sustainable while not exploiting labor. It is a fine balance, but it can be done.[/quote]
How?
[quote]It is about time, but I would prefer we create an overarching policy rather than attempting to deal with this in a piecemeal fashion that is likely to have unintended consequences down the road.[/quote]
And what would that overarching policy look like, in your view?
DG: [i]”… cutting costs by going away from in-house staff and toward contracted services by an external group.”[/i]
Keep in mind that ‘cutting costs’ means four things: 1) no pension obligation; 2) no post-retirement medical liability; 3) much lower cost medical benefit*; and 4) higher productivity.
The outside personnel who do these jobs are skilled professionals, just like the city employeees are/were. They are not entry level. They don’t work for a minimum wage without medical benefits. Their salaries will be at least as high as the city workers, maybe even higher.
Unless the contractors later acquire political power and act as monopsonists–the way the Davis Waste Removal company does–the long-run benefit of the outside contractors will be their much higher levels of productivity. That is not because these guys hustle and the city workers are sloths. It’s not because the outsiders take risks that the city workers will not. It’s because we will not be paying them to not work.
With city employees, we pay far, far too much for them to take vacations, holidays and so on. With all of their post-retirement benefits, we are effectively paying city workers 2+ years for each year actually worked. That is the real reason outsourcing these sorts of jobs is so much more productive.
DG: [i]”One of the points that was raised by Councilmember Lucas Frerichs was to look at whom we contract with and determine whether we can get local companies to fulfill those duties, under the belief that those who are more affiliated with the city would have a higher stake in the process.”[/i]
I could not disagree more with Lucas on this point. While I don’t think we need to discriminate against local companies, there is no logical reason to think that locally owned contractors would do a better job because they have ‘a higher stake.’
The real–and very, very troubling–problem with locally owned companies getting these sorts of contracts is that they are very likely to obtain political power from the jobs and they will exercise it the way the unions do. That is the great danger of outsourcing. You save some money at first by getting lower bids. And then you spend as much or more when the politically connected contractor starts funding and friending our elected officials. If you look at a lot of state and federal outsourcing, and see how uncompetitive the bidding is, you can see the dirty hands of political power at play. What Lucas wants to do will result in that in Davis. We are much better off if we allow companies located far from Davis who have no stake in our local politics to win bids.
DG:[i]”There are clearly times when outsourcing is the best use of resources. Those times include specialties that an outside firm can provide that you cannot perform in-house. They include perhaps economies of scale, where the city’s ability to provide a service will be markedly more expensive do to the relatively low volume of calls for service.”[/i]
You missed the entire point in your inclusion list. What they first and foremost include is when outsiders can do the job as well or better for significantly less money.
Because our city staff gets too much in benefits, pensions, OPEB and especially in paid leave, most types of city services can be done ‘as well or better for significantly less money’ by outsiders, as long as those outsiders do not become political powers in and of themselves. That power is the risk we always have to be on the lookout for.
DG: [i]”The Vanguard … has always focused … on … those employees who are paid large amounts of money in compensation.”[/i]
I have a new idea in this regard: The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays in base salary $150,000 or more in total compensation; and that consultant should answer the question for each of those jobs: “Does the actual work done justify the salary being paid?”
In other words, if a private company in the greater Sacramento region were to hire someone to do the tasks that, say, one of our deputy city managers ($106,500/year salary + roughly $75,000 extra) does, what total comp would such a person be paid? If it is in the ballpark, then there is no problem. However, if our city staff who are making substantially more than the market rate, we either need to cut out these positions or substantially reduce their compensation.
I should note that many jobs have no private comparables. All of our positions are, when contracts come up, compared to what other public sector employers pay in salary and benefits. And for many city jobs this is the only reasonable route. But there are still many that seem at least roughly comparable to private work.
Oops: “The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays [s]in base salary[/s] $150,000 or more in total compensation …”
Corrected: “The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays $150,000 or more in total compensation.”
Interesting fact I learned yesterday. All California cities that have filed bankruptcy and are currently close to filing bankruptcy are charter cities. I did not know that… might have missed it being reported by other bloggers.
Here is a little exercise to help understand the human psychology for dealing with debt.
Say you have $20,000 in credit card debt. You are making the minimum payments of $375/month, but your debt is also increasing $375 per month. What this means is that you have a cash flow problem… you are spending $375 more per month than you are taking in.
Now let’s say a relative gives you $20,000. What do you do with that $20,000? If you pay off the credit card you can balance your cash flow. However, you just got $20,000 and feel rich. Paying off your credit card would not help your standard of living. In terms of purchasing power, nothing would change. The only benefit would be the comfort you have no longer being $20,000 in debt.
What would most people do?
I think most people would pay down their credit card and spend some of the windfall on purchases that make them feel good. For example, pay down the credit card to $10,000 and use the other $10,000 to take a vacation and buy some new furniture. So, now you are $10,000 in debt and still short $200 per month in cash flow. But you feel good. Until three years when your credit card debt is again $20,000. Boring!
The problem politicians have is similar. Paying debt and balancing the budget is not exciting stuff. It does not capture the imagination. It does not provide any instant gratification. You can’t reward constituents for votes and campaign contributions by cutting spending and directing tax revenue to pay down debt.
We need to start focusing on the long-term picture and stop grabbing for instant gratification.
I think we all need to start flogging ourselves and learn to enjoy it.
“All California cities that have filed bankruptcy and are currently close to filing bankruptcy are charter cities. I did not know that… might have missed it being reported by other bloggers.”
That’s interesting, although I’m not sure why it’s that important.
Bell CA was/is a charter city.
I think it may be important because it is a possible indication that more self-controlled municiple government comes with risks that fools will end up in power and screw it up.
I think Davis would be a different animal because of our higher percentage of poitically-engaged citizens. However, it is concerning to me that some have talked about being a charter city as a way to improve our decision athority for dealing with our fiscal problems…. while the evidence is there that is can have the oposite effect.
Great article raising excellent points David. Another issue which there was not response to by the City Manager or Council was “What quality assurance mechanism will we have for their services we will be getting by outsourcing our tree trimming”? We will know what we are getting for this “bargain” price in the months to come and the Tree Commission needs to be fully engaged and be able to weigh in on this. We have seen a posting on one tree “butchering” rather than pruning disaster and the reaction to this is usually dramatic when it does happen since the tree many never recover.
The good news is thanks to Council members Dan Wolk and Lucas Frerichs the Tree Commission will be able to review and advise on the tree trimming sub-contracts now and there will be a joint City Council Tree Commission meeting. The seven year pruning schooled was raised and supported as well. It is unfortunate that the Tree Commission was not consulted before all of these hasty decisions were made but it is of some help that they will now have input will hopefully, be consulted first in the future.
One issue that was not addressed was the need to restore the Community Volunteer Coordinator Staff position. The City expects citizen volunteers to pick up some of the slack yet slashed that position as well. This coordinator would provide aid in many ways to the citizen volunteer’s including hauling mulch to new planted trees so that they survive our blistering summers, coordinating when and where trees are to be planted or pruned and instruction on planting and pruning methods. So where is the logic in eliminating the organizer of all of the citizen volunteerism? This issue needs to be addressed again and I hope will be raised in the joint meeting of Council and the Tree Commission.
And regarding Rich Rifkin’s comment:
“The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays $150,000 or more in total compensation.”
I could not agree more and this so needs to be done. It seems pretty clear that the City Manager is protecting all of the high paying Administrator/Management level jobs while the service level is being slashed. It is unfortunate that agreement could not be met on the union and the City but that does not excuse the City from not making cuts in the $100,000+ salary per year Administrator/Management sector. This City is top heavy and that needs to be remedied particularly for any high salaried employees who are unneeded and/or are doing a less than adequate job.
Jeff: I am not convinced that the problems are endemic to charter cities. I could be convinced that there are specifics within the governance structure, but right now I don’t see it. I say that as someone who did not support the chart proposal last time around.
I like Rich Rifkin’s suggestions.
I would however, add that all positions over $75,000 should be looked at.
From my perspective, the waste and inefficiencies within the City of Davis are throughout the staff management levels and structure.
David Thompson
Eileen: [i]”It seems pretty clear that the City Manager is protecting all of the high paying Administrator/Management level jobs …”[/i]
I don’t think this is a fair criticism. Steve Pinkerton has not been on the job all that long, and to the best of my knowledge there has not been any opportunity to get rid of highly paid personnel who may be overcompensated and/or not highly productive. Keep in mind that up until June 30, all these folks were under contract, and even now, all veteran employees have ‘tenure’ protections which in most cases would allow them ‘to bump’ other employees, if their jobs were cut.
Moreover, I think this is the sort of thing that the City Council needs to give [i]general[/i] direction to the City Manager on. We have five elected representatives. If they want a thinning at the top, then they need to vote on that and thus tell the City Manager to take appropriate action in that regard. (Given that Lucas and Brett just joined the Council, it’s not fair to criticize them for not having taken action in this specific regard, either.)
[i]”… while the service level is being slashed.”[/i]
I am not sure [u]where[/u] you are saying ‘the service level is being slashed.’ I know you care passionately about the city’s trees. But there is no case to be made, as of yet, that the tree servicing level is going to be cut at all. In fact, with the much higher productivity, it is very likely the service level will be increased.
If, however, your ‘service level’ comment was meant to be more general–for example, clearly the road maintenance has degraded and in some areas police services are as well–then I agree with you. But that has been a building problem since the massive increases in compensation were approved by the City Council in 2005 and since our tax revenues began sliding in 2008. It’s entirely unfair to blame Mr. Pinkerton for that mess.
I can only think of one or two companies locally that are big enough to bid on a contract of this size. It might be useful to ask them, if they don’t bid on it — why not? Also, they might have some insights as to the efficacy and quality of a per-unit bid process for maintaining an urban forest.
West Coast Arborists has been doing a great deal of the city tree work for quite a while. Their quality is fine. But part of the quality is maintaining adequate supervision by the city staff that has the training and experience. The supervisory staffing is being cut from adequate to minimal.
If I were advising the city manager, I would have retained a small in-house tree crew to handle emergency calls and assessments, and have them training to survey the city’s trees for maintenance work that might benefit from more immediate attention by the contractor. The schedules for maintenance are industry standards, but individual trees can’t always wait that long. In other words: compromise between absolute dollar cost savings (which are a given if you contract out) and the quality of service city residents expect and pay for. The tree crew is just a small part of the city’s labor force. The appropriate balance of cost savings to public expectations is going to be the sign of a good city manager.
DON: [i]”I can only think of one or two companies locally that are big enough to bid on a contract of this size.”[/i]
Do you think it would make sense to break up the coverage area, so that more and smaller companies would be able to bid? Although that might add management cost, it seems to me that having different vendors covering different parts of town could have some advantages, not the least of which is a long-term competition.
That’s not unreasonable. It would also be worth asking how many companies have bid on this contract in the past. I would also be curious to see the contract (donshor@gmail.com) to see how the ISA standards are specified, among other things.
I totally agree with Don’s comments. The question is did the City bother to open the sub-contracting to go out to bid to local arborists?
And regarding Rich Rifkin’s response to my comments, I stand by my comments because there has been no significant change in the $100,000+ administrative level cut backs that I have observed by the City Manager but the sure have been downstream of that. I recognize the problem that there was no agreement at the service level Union-City negotiations, but I am astonished that we added a $150,000+ “Utilities Manager” Administrative position in the wake of the draconian service staff cuts.
I guess I am not exactly sure where you were going with your point of reviewing the $150,000 salary plus compensation level staff Rich. It would appear that you now seem to be arguing against your own comments.
I don’t get the point that we should only look at jobs paying over some level. We should look at ALL jobs.
I think it has already been established that the tree maintenance workers made about $128,000 in total compensation when factoring their pay plus the total value of their benefits including their paid time off. So, two of them probably cost us about what one of those $150,000 employees cost us (due to the benefit costs).
There should be a 5-step process addressing all departments/employees:
1. What are the inventory of necessary services, projects and service levels?
2. What are the internal resource consolidation opportunities that still support these services and service levels?
3. What are the outsource opportunities for supporting these services and service levels?
4. Complete business case proposing best solution(s).
5. Decide and implement.
JB: [i]”I don’t get the point that we should only look at jobs paying over some level.”[/i]
I think David is expressing his quasi-populist ideology.
I don’t share that bias. But I should say, Jeff, that there appear to be certain city staffers who are highly paid but (to my eye) not highly important. In most cases, it looks to me like these are people who either 1) had a modest job and a modest income but were elevated to a higher sounding title in order to qualify for a higher total income, when their duties and responsibilities never climbed up, or at least did not climb high enough to justify their higher income. (Much of the blame for this, in my opinion, goes to Bill Emlen. He kept creating new, high paid jobs and filling them with lower-skilled ‘clerks.’); or 2) have worked for the City of Davis for a very long time, are well liked, are highly paid, and no one can really say why they make the money they do. I would add that when I speak off the record with city employees, a small handful of names regularly come up as people who fit each of these categories.
Eileen: [i]”… there has been no significant change in the $100,000+ administrative level cutbacks … but there sure have been downstream of that.”[/i]
This is really not true. The significant personnel cuts ‘downstream’ in the Pinkerton era came in the wake of the DCEA debacle. If DCEA had been more reasonable–that is, if that labor group had agreed to what all the other non-safety groups agreed to–it’s unlikely those 9 jobs would have been axed when they were axed.
Otherwise, the other recent ‘cutbacks’ have come following retirements or transfers when positions have not been filled. Before this year–going back to what might be called the Navazio era–there were more ‘downstream’ budgetary cuts. But all of those–including laying off a lot of non-sworn police employees–were seemingly haphazard responses to the budget troubles, not really well-thought out long-term solutions to our systemic problems.
Eileen: [i]”I am astonished that we added a $150,000+ “Utilities Manager” Administrative position.”[/i]
The new “general manager of utilities” position replaced what had been three administrative jobs under Bill Emlen and Paul Navazio. If you add the total comp cost of those three positions, the cost was previously much greater than it is now.
You add that there have been ‘draconian service staff cuts.’ Other than those positions which have been unfilled or were made prior to Pinkerton becoming CM, what are all these ‘draconian cuts’ you speak of? The only ones I can think of are the 9 DCEA jobs, and, again, they were eliminated because the DCEA acted unreasonably.
Rich,
So just what IS the job of this new Utilities Manager? Is it to be a “just say no” back up to the City Manager? You may see a cost saving but just wait until you have a tree maintenance problem in your neighborhood, or a public works problem, or a planning issue that you are not so happy about. You may change your opinion. You may well get a response of : “well we have had budget cuts you know”.
I still would like an explanation of your earlier comment of:
“The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays $150,000 or more in total compensation.”
I still do not understand the point making this comment relative to your current comments, which seem completely counter. Please elaborate.
[b]”The City should hire a consultant who would look at every job in the city which pays $150,000 or more in total compensation.” [/b]
[i]I still do not understand the point making this comment relative to your current comments, which seem completely counter.[/i]
The answer to the question I posed, “Does the actual work done justify the salary being paid?,” explains my thinking. That is, if we find we have highly paid employees who are being paid in total comp well more than is justified–per the findings of the consultant–then we need to make some changes.
Eileen: [i]”So just what IS the job of this new Utilities Manager?”[/i]
According to Mr. Pinkerton, the General Manager over Utilities, Development and Operations,” Herb Niederberger*, will: [quote] oversee and coordinate all development-related functions within the city. In addition, field operations which previously were in multiple departments will now be centralized under Herb ’s direction. He will also be in charge of the city’s utility operation and be able to apply his considerable expertise in capital project management to lead the renovation and expansion of our water and wastewater utilities.”[/quote] Mr. Pinkerton said that these jobs were formerly done by three executives: [quote]”Instead of filling several vacant executive level positions, we’ve created the General Manager position to oversee and coordinate all development-related functions within the city.”[/quote]*Neiderberger should not be confused with Neidermeyer from Animal House ([url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dy2fo6E_pI[/url]).
Rich: good points about the entitled monopolist contract enjoyed by Davis Wate Removal. They are on the citizens’ list of programs to audit and compare to other companies. Sometime after that 4th crewmember is gone from the two trucks racing to non injury accidents
Michael, do you think Pinkerton really is serious until he fires 25% of the firefighters? We’d save a lot more money, and could hire back some tree trimmers.
Here, we’re concerned about hiring local businesses, but what about city staff? Why do so many firefighters live out of Davis? We’re concerned that low-paid folks can’t live here (so we have affordable housing projects that don’t work out, unfortunately), but I’d think firefighters get paid enough to afford to live locally.
City employees who live in the city they serve might be more considerate in the way they deal with job negotiations, boycott local grocery stores, etc.
Boone-[i]I think it has already been established that the tree maintenance workers made about $128,000 in total compensation when factoring their pay plus the total value of their benefits including their paid time off. So, two of them probably cost us about what one of those $150,000 employees cost us (due to the benefit costs).
[/i]
They didn’t make $128,000. They might have cost that much, but I don’t see how you can add paid leave on top of salary. It doesn’t count as double time. Stop with the nonsense propaganda.
Rifkin-[i]… all veteran employees have ‘tenure’ protections which in most cases would allow them ‘to bump’ other employees, if their jobs were cut. [/i]
This is true, but a lot of the high pay management positions are “at will” positions, no tenure, no bumping, no reason, just laid off.
[quote]”…but just wait until you have a tree maintenance problem in your neighborhood….”[/quote]But, Eileen, didn’t you hear that we’ll be having better and faster tree maintenance at half the price from now on? Since, most everyone was really pleased with our old service, just imagine how happy we’ll be in the improved future.[quote]”Mr. Pinkerton said that these jobs were formerly done by three executives:
‘Instead of filling several vacant executive level positions, we’ve created the General Manager position….'[/quote]Rich, can you see anything wrong with these trade-offs? This looks like an exceptional move to me–one executive replacing three. At a savings for $400,000 or so! Looks as though Pinkerton is doing a good job at analyzing the top positions by himself, no consultant needed.
Just saying: The jury is out on your question
[quote]Just saying: The jury is out on your question [/quote]Interesting. However, the “jury has come in” on 3 person fire crews? MH… how did you come into possession of your office parcel? Was it the result of a young woman losing her life in a fire that destroyed the existing house ~ 1987?
nah, could’nt be… MH is a “newbie”
preston wrote:
> They didn’t make $128,000. They might have cost that much,
> but I don’t see how you can add paid leave on top of salary.
> It doesn’t count as double time. Stop with the nonsense
> propaganda.
We need to look at the paid leave just like we need to look at the cost of trucks and equipment (that is as far as I know not included in the $128K cost).
If two guys agree to spend a year trimming trees at my property and one guy “makes” $75K and the other “makes” $100K but I need to pay $25K for healthcare, $6K for a paid vacation at the end of the year, $50K for a truck and $20K for equipment to the guy that “only” makes $75K what is a better deal?
P.S. In most union jobs you don’t lose the vacation so it is above and beyond the base pay (see the recent article from the LA times below):
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chief-compensation-20120711,0,5249903.story
7/12/12, NY Times: Bankruptcy in California Isn’t Seen as a Trend ([url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/business/bankruptcy-in-california-isnt-seen-as-a-trend.html[/url])
With the level of paid time off provided (for a 20-year DCEA employee it is 28 days vacation, 14.5 holidays and 12 days sick leave = 54.5 days… which is about one week shy of three months), we need to hire a greater number of workers to provide coverage. In this case, we would need one additional FTE to cover the paid time off for every four.
For this reason, and the fact it is standard practice in the private-sector to include the value of paid time off as a benefit (note that real labor costs of paid time-off accruals are balance sheet liabilities), we certainly should count it in the cost of their total compensation.
If we significatnly cut the amount of paid time off given all city employees to match the averages in the private sector, we could reduce the labor force and not impact services. Also, we could prevent the need to look at outsourcing as a cost-saving measure.
On the NYT article… this is exactly another example of the bias from this corrupt news organization.
Note the headline, and then this quote from the expert quoted in the article:
[quote]“I don’t believe that this is the beginning of a tidal wave of insolvency across the country,” said Richard P. Larkin, director of credit analysis at the underwriting firm H. J. Sims. “I am worried, however, that this phenomenon may grow in California.”[/quote]
Hmm… sure sounds like he believes it may be a trend, since he is worried that it may grow.
But, since that goes against a liberal worldview that supports unions and demands they keep being overfed with tax increases, the NYT has to spin the headline.
The headline should have been:
[b]Experts Fear California Bankruptcies May Grow[/b]
That sends a completely different message.
I don’t agree Jeff. First of all, I don’t agree that this is a liberal viewpoint in terms of bankruptcies – many liberals have been leading the way in California cities worried about bankruptcy and fiscal solvency.
But second, is the article about California or the nation? The answer is both. The article refers to california but reports to a broader audience. That said, you also took the quote in isolation, they proceed to report on investor behavior. They also quote another expert who does not think that it is a trend, instead he said “James E. Spiotto, a Chapter 9 bankruptcy specialist at the law firm of Chapman & Cutler in Chicago, said the developments in California might not be a trend. But he sees them as a signal to other states to get ready to intervene in the affairs of their most troubled cities.”
In sum total your analysis has three flaws:
1. It assumes a liberal – conservative divide that may not exist
2. It forgets the audience that the paper is reporting to is a national not a state one
3. It takes a quote in isolation rather than considering the overall reporting of the article
David, those are all three fair points.
Taking the first one, yes – I am guilty of too much generalization of this on ideological grounds. It is actually more a Democrat vs. Republic political divide since the public employee union campaign funding mechanism favors Dems.
There are plenty of people owning liberal and conservative views that support reductions in public-sector pay and benefits costs to help balance budgets and save programs. So, it was wrong for me to blame liberals for this view.
However, I think I have to stand by my opinion that the headline was misleading and biased.
There is a vast difference between the meaning of the word “isn’t” and term “might not”, wouldn’t you say?
It is this type of nuanced and camouflaged bias that drives me nuts. I shows up right-leaning sometimes – and I suspect I am less sensitive to that when it does (although I do often note it and it still bothers me); however, it shows up as left bias much more frequently in certain news and news media establishments like the NYT.
Jeff: I just think you have to read too deeply into things to get to a bias with that example. The ABC news person who published the report that the shooter was linked to the tea party is a cleaner example. That said having been around reporters and written news stories, the bigger problem is less any kind of bias, than tunnel vision – not properly considering alternatives sources and ideas for a given story.
[i]”Jeff: I just think you have to read too deeply into things to get to a bias with that example. The ABC news person who published the report that the shooter was linked to the tea party is a cleaner example.”[/i]
But that is my point David. That type of nuanced bias is incremental in its corruption of the mindset of the population. It moves the needle on public opinion and public perception without blatant moves that would identify it as bias to those NOT thinking too deeply. The ABC report was an example of that type of blatant bias; but we don’t see many examples for reasons that are easy to understand.
It is disengenuous to deny that subtle bias in news does not matter because collectively it makes a huge impact. Just like liberal professors collectively have a huge impact on the general student population.
Balance for me means either:
– No opinion favoring one political view over another… just a story of the facts and then maybe two opposing views given equal weight and attention.
– or –
– Clear and honest identification of a biased view.
I was thinking about our past debates on racism. Maybe there is a correlation here. You and others still carry a torch combating a level of racial bias that you experience and see. If it exists at the level you and others claim it does, it is largely subtle and subject to different interpretations.
I see some similarities here for those claiming or denying liberal bias in our mainstream news and media, and our institutions of higher learning. In fact, it was this epiphany of similarity that has caused me to be more observant and questioning related to racial bias. I am in my infancy for this and have yet to note or learn anything significant that changes my perspective that racial bias exists in Davis at a level exceeding general human intolerance and tribalism; but at least my mind is more open to the potential that it exists. Similarly, I think you should consider opening your mind to the occurrence of this subtle liberal bias. It exists.
“That type of nuanced bias is incremental in its corruption of the mindset of the population.”
I think you are getting into too subjective an area. Even if we think bias as a continuum you end up in a mushy middle gray area where reasonable people disagree. And frankly I am not sure your example is bias at all, I think the headline was fairly accurate and you are reading far too much into it. Your reading into that headline motivations that may not even be present in the person who chose it.
David, related to my points on media bias:
[url]http://www.theblaze.com/stories/study-all-major-news-outlets-have-left-leaning-bias-that-distorts-minds/[/url]
Jeff: I’m well aware of Groceclose’s research. We’ve actually discussed this before.