Someone asked on yesterday’s column, whether this mistake came from the previous council, and whether I’d be giving them a pass. The simple answer is no, the previous council had a track record for obfuscation that dissolved any effort at giving them a benefit of the doubt.
Rich Rifkin, whom I often disagree with but at the same time respect his body of work, said yesterday morning, “It was intentional. It was deceitful. The press release quoting that very misleading number was designed to sell the hiring of Mr. Pinkerton. That makes it a lie.”
But as someone else put it, “The difference between lying and just plain being wrong comes down to intent and knowledge. Intentionally presenting information that you know to be false is lying. I don’t think the council’s intent was to deceive.”
I agree. I think it was an honest yet avoidable mistake. Someone should have caught it.
Does that give them a pass? No. They should not have made that mistake and it is an embarrassing one.
Moreover, it damages them. It puts the city in a bind with regard to employee contracts. There was a time this year, when it looked like the economy was improving, but no more. There is now talk of a double-dip recession. Revenue is flat right now and it is going to get enormous pressure to maintain even that, when and if the water rates take effect.
If we go into another recession, we are looking at an even bigger hit. Davis is in the center of the most vulnerable region. We have survived somewhat better than our counterparts but we are probably more vulnerable to a second downturn, given the nature of who lives here and the problems facing the state and university.
In short, the economy in Davis is going to be a challenge, we need a strong leader, and I think we have to hope for the best here with the hiring of Steve Pinkerton.
Against the notion that the city needs to hire a person competitively, Sue Greenwald wrote yesterday, “The rest of the council argues that we should benchmark our city manager positions against those of other small cities. This is the same argument that the council majority used when they instituted the disastrous enhanced early retirement formula — other cities do it so we have to follow them or the city will be uncompetitive.”
She added, “I have never bought this argument. I personally know many brilliant, underemployed, highly educated people in Davis who would be happy to take these jobs at 2% at 60 or even 2% at 65 if that is what it takes to make our benefits sustainable (and I do believe in decent benefits).”
We are now where we are, in terms of the decision to hire Mr. Pinkerton and the contract.
As I wrote yesterday, I am bothered by a $44,000 increase at the same time the council is asking workers making far less to make sacrifices. So, we expect the employees to do so, but not Mr. Pinkerton? Doesn’t seem fair to me and more importantly the employees will undoubtedly see it as less than fair.
On the other hand, perhaps we hired the guy who can help us get back to where we need to be.
I ran into a 2008 column from the Stockton Record written by columnist Mike Fitzgerald entitled, “Stockton losing a visionary.”
Mr. Fitzerald wrote, “Pinkerton is one occupant of City Hall who clearly grasped healthy policies for Stockton’s growth and revival. He understands cities better than anyone I ever met.”
“I think there’s a real simple thing,” Mr. Pinkerton was quoted. “If you’re basically abandoning one part of the city for another, we all end up paying for that.”
Stockton had problems at that point and Mr. Pinkerton apparently recognized that its urban model was flawed in a number of fundamental ways.
One thing that immediately jumps out is that he recognized that “growth” had “not paid for itself,” that developers and not planners drive growth. Mr. Fitzerald notes, “Pinkerton sees this as a failure of the city to impose a plan. Instead, developers buy land where they can. The city slavishly extends itself to incorporate their projects.”
In a growth-controlled city like Davis, we do not have that exact problem, and yet the projects that come forward are driven by developers not planning, not the community.
Couple that approach with Mr. Pinkerton’s reputation in Manteca as someone who would reorganize city government and be willing to make the tough decisions to cut personnel costs, and you may have the person that Davis needs to go forward.
Mr. Pinkerton is about to jump into the fire. He arrives on September 2, and on September 6 is the deadline for Prop 218 protests and the issue of water rates will not be resolved then. September 30 is the self-imposed deadline to figure out where to cut $2.5 million in personnel costs.
Nothing like not easing the new guy in. And now he gets thrown into a controversy that is not of his own doing. Reading the comments from Manteca, it does not appear that he needs help in this regard, he can probably do just fine at getting himself into trouble.
As far as we are concerned, Council does not get a pass on the contract issue. First, yes, we believe it was an honest mistake rather than intentional deceit. Second, we believe this will make their job more difficult, but that also means that failure will be criticized more strongly. Third, their choice at City Manager will be even more scrutinized.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
As if his job and level of expectation is not yet unrealistically high, poor Mr. Pinkerton now has this salary issue to “work off.”
What’s done is done and if the City Council can’t add numbers correctly force them to take remedial math lessons at Davis Adult Education. Or throw the lot of them out of office next election.
We have become pre-occupied with the cost figures for a single city official which, in reality, is a very modest overall cost in the larger scheme of city finance. It becomes symbolic of the larger cost problem only if we choose to make it so. But if we continue to become obsessed with the $40K cost, how about including a savings that preceded this current tempest in a tea pot?
For several months, the position of city manager was vacant. Another city official served as interim city manager and essentially worked two positions for a single salary. So, for you bean-counters out there, how much money did the city save in the city manager position for that time? Is it possible that the current pay raise for Pinkerton has already been collected for the year to follow?
Phil Coleman
Before the naysayers jump in, I just want to thank you for the refreshing point of view.
[i]Rich Rifkin, whom I often disagree with but at the same time respect his body of work, said yesterday morning, “… the $3,500 number is not excusable on the grounds of a mistake. It was clearly designed to deceive. It took one guy’s base salary (Pinkerton) and compared it with another guy’s base salary + his vacation cashout + his management leave cashout + his cafeteria cashout in order to pretend the two were making pretty much the same thing. If you don’t understand that accounting is intentionally deceptive, you don’t understand accounting.”[/i]
David Greenwald, whose ideology often leads him to the wrong conclusions, but at the same time I respect the effort he puts in to making this blog work, apparently does not have any background in accounting.
I have high hopes for Mr. Pinkerton after reading his comments about Stockton’s development/growth problems as a result of the “failure of the city to impose a plan”.
Growth-controlled, or not, Davis suffers the same problem. We also do not have a plan. Instead, we have a reactive vs. proactive Planning Dept. They entertain any proposal brought before them.
If we had a community/City developed plan for growth, we could say to developers “Bring us a plan that meets our criteria and we will consider it. if it doesn’t meet our criteria, don’t bother”
The Cannery proposal is a perfect example of the lack of our community to have a plan for how we would like to see our town grow. Until we develop a plan it is going to be “business as usual”.
The $44,000 extra we are paying for Pinkerton could have perhaps saved the integrated pest management control position, no? Or some other important city employee position? Paying an extra $44,000 for the City Mgr is going to make it a hard sell to insist other city employees take a pay cut. The words “shared sacrifice” will ring hollow in the ears of city employees I would think. Intentional or inadvertent mistake of announcing the salary incorrectly notwithstanding, the substantial increase in pay of the City Mgr position is going to be hard to explain away during economic hard times.
Nevertheless, my hope is Pinkerton shows himself to be well worth his salary, and can bring in the necessary costs savings this city needs…
ERM
“Shared Sacrifice”
You had me laughing at that one. I guess Obama has beat that phrase into everyone’s head. Obama’s house of cards is starting to fall. Looking at today’s stock market we’re all suffering his “shared sacrifice”. Our debt is now 100% of our GDP. It’s going to get ugly. Great time for him to try and raise taxes. He must really want to put the nail in the coffin.
[i]”Our debt is now 100% of our GDP. It’s going to get ugly.”[/i]
This seems to be the big news story today ([url]http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-here-we-come-us-gross-national-debt-jumps-238-billion-in-one-day-2011-8[/url]). [quote]GDP for 2011 may come in slightly higher, at around $15 trillion, but our debt is growing much faster than our GDP, and the ratio will only get worse. The US will break through Ireland’s 114% by early 2013 and Italy’s 120% half a year later. Greece, at 152%, will take a while longer. King of the Hill is Japan at a mind-boggling 229%.[/quote] It was only 10 years ago that out debt:GDP ratio was 52%.
The worst American ratio for debt:GDP came back in WW2. We then had a declining debt:GDP ratio for most of the next 35 years, until Reagan took office and our debt suddenly exploded. The two big factors have been a grealy increased population of seniors, taking lots of money for Medicare and Social Security and the great increase in defense spending, including an endless series of expensive wars and an endless series of buying ever more expensive weapons and defense technologies.
Save the last 5 years of Clinton, the debt build-up has never ceased since 1981. All the Reagan years, all the GHW Bush years, all the GW Bush years, and the Obama years, our federal debt has been growing far faster than our GDP.
[quote]As far as we are concerned, Council does not get a pass on the contract issue — David Greenwald[/quote]David, the error was not on the part of the entire council. I was not part of negotiating team, I saw the contract for the first time at the July 26 closed session and I reported the error at my first opportunity after I found out about it, which was Aug. 1 council meeting.
I was the only council member to report and correct the error, so please don’t blame the entire council.
Sue, you get a pass. As far as fiscal and development issues you always seem to get it right.
From http://www.usgovernmentspending.com:
[quote]The United States federal government began with a substantial debt, the cost of the Revolutionary War. Under Alexander Hamilton’s funding system the debt was paid off by 1840. Government debt has typically peaked after wars. It breached 30 percent of GDP after the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I. It breached 100 percent of GDP in World War II. Government debt also breached 100 percent of GDP in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.
[/quote]
From http://www.endprogressivessocializing.org:
[quote]When Clinton took office, the national debt was at $4.1 trillion. By the time Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control of congress after 1994 and began enacting the Contract With America, the national debt was about $4.8 trillion. When Clinton finally signed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the national debt was about $5.4 trillion.
At the end of 2000, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. A year later, with Democrats in control of the Senate, and then 9/11, the national debt stood at $5.9 trillion. 5 years later, at the end of 2006 and 5 years of Republican rule in both Congress and the White House, two wars, a tax cut inspired economic recovery, the national debt stood at $8.7 trillion. Two years later, under a Democratic Congress and Republican President, the national debt stood at $10.7 trillion. Today, two years after complete Democratic control of Congress and a Democratic President, it is around $14 trillion. Feeling sick yet?
So what was Clinton’s surplus? Well, it wasn’t ever anything more than on paper. Every year of Clinton’s presidency the debt increased. In fact, his budget for the fiscal year ending September 29, 2001 resulted in a $133 billion deficit.
So why did Clinton say surplus? Well, fist of all, as mentioned above, there are two different kinds of debt. There is public debt (government bonds, etc.) and there is inter-government debt. Inter-government debt is when the government raids obligations like Social Security with the promise of paying it back. Right now the government owes $6.8 trillion to citizens and foreign countries, and owes $4.2 trillion to Social Security and other government funds/obligations.
When President Clinton said that he had a surplus, it was because his budget between 1998 and 2001 paid down about $450 billion in public debt. He did this by borrowing more than $800 billion from government lock-boxes. And the national debt increased even despite the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. So next time you find the words on the tip of your tongue that President Clinton had a surplus and Bush wasted it, just remember that in 2006 some projected the 2009 budget to have as much as a $38 billion surplus before Democrats took over Congress the following year.[/quote]
I would say there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the aisle. And at some point, each President has to take responsibility for his own administration, or lack thereof…
I’m sure David would be happy to make a thread about federal fiscal policy, but this isn’t it.
[quote]I saw the contract for the first time at the July 26 closed session and I reported the error at my first opportunity after I found out about it, which was Aug. 1 council meeting.
I was the only council member to report and correct the error, so please don’t blame the entire council. [/quote]So, can we assume that it was an “error”, and that Mr. Pinkerton acknowledged the “error”, and wasn’t coerced, at least in part, by the Council’s reaction to Rifkin’s e-mail, due to the fact that he (Pinkerton) had ‘committed’ and gave Manteca his “notice”? If not, is this the “good faith” bargaining that other employees should expect to see from this Council?
Sue: While I understand your point, I still hold the council collectively responsible for the decisions they make. Whether you are on the negotiating team or not, you are responsible for what you vote for and if you do not know what you are voting for, either vote no or abstain and tell the council if they desire unanimity, they need to be more open to disclosure. That said, when you vote against the item, you’re generally speaking off the hook. This column really was directed toward Joe and Rochelle.
[quote]I’m sure David would be happy to make a thread about federal fiscal policy, but this isn’t it.[/quote]
Sorry Don, but I was responding to some of Rich Rifkin’s comments…
[quote]Sue: While I understand your point, I still hold the council collectively responsible for the decisions they make. Whether you are on the negotiating team or not, you are responsible for what you vote for and if you do not know what you are voting for, either vote no or abstain and tell the council if they desire unanimity, they need to be more open to disclosure. — David Greenwald[/quote]That is exactly what I did David, over and over and over again, and you should know that.
[quote]Rifkin: It took one guy’s base salary (Pinkerton) and compared it with another guy’s base salary + his vacation cashout + his management leave cashout + his cafeteria cashout in order to pretend the two were making pretty much the same thing. If you don’t understand that accounting is intentionally deceptive, you don’t understand accounting.” [/quote]
You don’t need to understand accounting to understand this deception. Basic math and any experience as an employer or employee is more than enough background to understand it.