COMMENTARY: There is a stunning and sobering editorial in the Sacramento Bee this morning linking the skyrocketing murder rate in Stockton to its bankruptcy. This year, there have been 68 murders, ten more than last year which was also a record, and on pace to more than triple the 24 that there were in 2008.
Writes the Bee: “The sad saga of bloody, financially struggling Stockton should serve as a cautionary tale for other financially beleaguered cities in California. Good fiscal management isn’t some esoteric goal. It is essential to the health and safety of real people.”
Stockton has been forced to lay off almost a quarter of its police force, with pay and benefits cuts to those who remain. In 2008, the police force was 441, which the Bee called “already too small for a city of close to 300,000.” Now it’s 329.
“Experts blame Stockton’s soaring murder count partly on its collapsing finances,” the Bee writes.
But there is more.
The Bee goes on to note, “As police and residents work to curb the violence, the city’s finances remain in shambles. Stockton has filed for bankruptcy protection, but squabbling between the city, bondholders, employee unions and others has kept a formal court declaration of bankruptcy on hold and delayed indefinitely the city’s efforts to rebuild its fiscal house.”
“To make things worse, a City Council that did the hard work of reducing spending, including cutting the workforce by 25 percent and trimming pay by 29 percent, was booted from office in November,” the Bee writes. “Political and financial chaos at City Hall will make stemming the carnage on city streets that much more difficult.”
The take-home lesson: “Other cities – notably Sacramento and San Jose – are grappling with an uptick in crime. But what is happening in Stockton should be a wake-up call for everyone who has a stake in municipal finances.”
There will be people who argue that Stockton, for a whole variety of reasons, is an extreme example – and they are correct.
The finances of Stockton are in bad shape and the combination of those finances with an already volatile situation in terms of gang violence is likely part of the explanation.
Researchers have been mixed on the effect of police on crime rates. Some studies have suggested little impact. Some have suggested that it is more likely to impact things like property crimes, where presence of more officers is likely to deter things like theft and burglary.
Other studies such as Steve Levitt’s 2004 study of the decline in the crime rate from 1991 to 2001, found that “the increase in police between 1991 and 2001 can account for a crime reduction of 5- 6 percent across the board. The increase in police can thus explain somewhere between one-fifth and one-tenth of the overall decline in crime.”
On the other hand, he noted, “Whether this investment in police has been a cost-effective approach to reducing crime is a different question. As noted above, annual expenditures on police are approximately $60 billion, so the cost of the 14 percent increase in police (assuming marginal cost is equal to average cost, which is likely to be a reasonable approximation) is $8.4 billion a year.”
So the research is not decided on this point, but it really matters less that the decline in police officers caused the problem – the bigger issue is that it is hamstringing efforts to deal with the problem.
That is where the parallels with the city of Davis, I think, are most important. In the past several days, we have laid out what we are calling Davis’ fiscal cliff, the inaction of the city to address its fiscal problems.
The city doesn’t have to deal with the complexity of bankruptcy, but it has long been in need of fiscal reform. Those reforms were blunted by the allegiances of the previous council with key labor groups among the city employees.
Between 2009-10, when the previous MOUs were agreed to, and now, the city has completely turned over its council. The new council has been committed to fixing the fiscal house and has been blunted by the strength of the city employee unions, which have apparently caught city officials off guard.
The city is never going to face the type of crime wave surge that Stockton has, but it is clear that the city’s resources with regard to police are stretched thin. That has left the city vulnerable at times to property crimes, particularly in areas with close proximity to I-80.
At the same time, the city’s roadways and infrastructure continue to decay. Part of the budget was put into place to shore up those areas where state and federal funding has disappeared in recent years.
On the other hand, the city, in addition to overcommitting on retirement and benefits, has also overcommitted on fire services.
The recent fire study completed by the interim chief, shows that the city has continued to use four firefighters on an engine while refusing for 15 years or more to drop their boundaries with UC Davis, which would have enabled the city to receive a higher level of service with perhaps fewer city firefighters.
As we have often noted, there is actually a long string of agreements that have put the city in a precarious situation with regard to fire. First, the decision to go to four firefighters on an engine was in response to new OSHA regulations. Second, there was the decision to go to enhanced benefits, allowing firefighters to retire at the age of 50 with 3% of their final pay for each year of service.
Then there was a 36 pay increase from 2004 to 2008 during the previous labor contract, nearly twice what police received.
At the same time, the city is paying for all of this additional fire service, despite the average of five structure fires per year for the last three (as far back as Interim Chief Scott Kenley’s report went).
With most of the city’s calls being medical, the city might be better served with a revised model.
It is not that the city is going to face a huge murder rate if we do not fix the fiscal problems, but the fiscal problems mean that if the city cannot settle with its bargaining units, there will be layoffs and outsourcing. All of that will leave the city very vulnerable if an emergency situation arises that requires new spending.
That is the true lesson of Stockton and one that we all need to learn. The lesson is that fiscal insolvency means we no longer have the resources to put into solving emerging problems and preventing them from becoming crises.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
