http://PublicSafetyProject.org/

El Segundo residents voted overwhelmingly, by 90 percent, against Measure P, the firefighter union’s initiative to hijack the city’s local fire department to maximize and lock-in the firefighters’ salaries and job security.

Measure P would have disbanded the city’s local fire department, and forced the city to contract with the Los Angeles County Fire Department for a greatly reduced level of fire and paramedic services.

Measure P would have permanently eliminated the city’s three paramedic ambulances, forcing residents to rely on distant out-of-town ambulance companies with greatly increased hospital transport times and fees.

Measure P would have likely resulted in increased loss of life. The city has few fires and mostly paramedic calls. There are typically zero, one, or two major structure fires (with $100,000 or more in damage) per
year, and none have been residential in the last three years. In contrast, there are between 700 and 800 paramedic ambulance hospital transports per year.

The El Segundo Firefighters’ Association (ESFFA), the firefighters’ labor union, collected Measure P initiative petition signatures by lying to voters, telling them they must sign the petition to preserve the local city fire department when the opposite was true.

The firefighters probably spent more than $100,000 in support of Measure P, including use of a professional campaign manager, an attorney, a lawsuit against the city, and at least three propaganda “push” telephone polls. In contrast, I and other residents ran a very low cost, but extremely effective, long and sustained grassroots campaign against Measure P. The results were spectacular.

Under Measure P, the El Segundo city firefighters would have been transferred to become Los Angeles County Fire Department employees, with their salaries unchanged, even though they would have been paid significantly more than the other L.A. County firefighters. The city would have been forced to pay for their excessive salaries and benefits and would have lost all control over those costs.

The city would have also lost control over the quality of fire department services. The firefighters would have reported to a remote L.A. County fire chief in the city of Gardena, and would not have been accountable to any city official.

In other election results, the two city council candidates endorsed and funded by the El Segundo Police Officers’ Association (ESPOA), the city’s police labor union, were defeated even though the spent significantly more money than the independent candidates.

One of the police union candidates, Cindy Mortesen, came in second to last place out of eight candidates running for three city council seats. The other police union candidate, Scott Houston, came in fourth place, even though he ran for city council in 2010 and had been campaigning continuously for two and a half years.

The fact that Measure P and Mortesen and Houston were backed by the city’s firefighter and police unions was a central theme of the campaign against them, together with disclosing and widly publicizing the firefighter and police union salaries, benefits, and pension contributions paid for by the city’s taxpayers.

Firefighter, police, teacher, and other government employee “associations” are actually labor unions that engage in collective bargaining with the politicians they endorsed and supported with monetary and in-kind contributions. They endorse and support the candidates will give them the biggest raises and raise taxes and fees to pay for it.

Thus, their is an inherent and unavoidable conflict of interest when government employees are allowed to unionized and engage in collective bargaining with the elected officials whose campaigns they supported.

This conflict of interest cannot be eliminated by restrictions on political campaigning, which is political free speech protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, the only workable solution to prevent city, county, and state government bankruptcy is to abolish all government employee unions and collective bargaining, by repealing the laws that allowed them and enacting laws to explicitly prohibit them.

This will protect the taxpayers, property owners, and residents. It will also protect the government employee union members and their pensions from themselves and their union bosses. A smaller percentage of something is better than a larger percentage of nothing.

Michael D. Robbins
Former El Segundo City Councilman
Director, Public Safety Project
El Segundo, California

Official web site:
http:///PublicSafetyProject.org/

YouTube video web page:
http://www.YouTube.com/user/PublicSafetyProject

The calendar year 2009 maximum and average total compensation (including pension contributions and benefits cost) for all 56 city of El Segundo, California sworn firefighters, including management, were $357,669 and $213,209. The maximum and average CalPERS pension contributions paid by the city per sworn firefighter were $83,594 and $43,124. These figures do not reflect large raises received during the recession in 2010.

The calendar year 2009 maximum and average total compensation (including pension contributions and benefits cost) for all 64 city of El Segundo, California sworn police officers, including management, were $552,189 and $184,635. The maximum and average CalPERS pension contributions paid by the city per sworn firefighter were $ 77,274.66 and $66,811.45. These figures do not reflect large raises received during the recession in 2010.

“Former El Segundo Police Chief David Cummings, who retired in 2009 with about eleven weeks left in the year, had total 2009 compensation of about $596,657, including his city contract and CalPERS pension income while he continued working as the El Segundo Police Chief after his retirement. Cummings’ post-retirement City employment contract acknowledged that he would be receiving his $210,000 per year CalPERS pension income while he continued working as the City’s police chief after his retirement.”

Michael D. Robbins
Former El Segundo, California City Councilman
Public Safety Project
http://www.PublicSafetyProject.org/

Highest Paid El Segundo City Employee in 2009:

http://www.publicsafetyproject.org/elsegundo/elsegundo_payroll.html#highest_paid_in_2009

Public Safety Project
PublicSafetyProject.org

See the El Segundo City Employee Payroll web page at:

http://www.PublicSafetyProject.org/elsegundo/elsegundo_payroll.html

The compensation data posted does not yet include the pension and benefits data. That data will be posted in the near future.

Public Safety Project

If firefighting were privatized, the market rate for a firefighter would quickly be made known. Their skill set is somewhere between a carpenter and an Electrician. Accordingly their pay would probably be in a range of between $48,000.00 and $55,000.00. Add to that employers contribution to a 401K, health insurance, social security, workman’s comp etc and the burden to taxpayers would be around $65,000.00.

That means the rent seeking gained by the public employee unions through their corrupted politicians cost the taxpayers around $100,000.00 per year per firefighter. Imagine that, $100K.