Even if you cut that compensation IN HALF, a $75,000 comp is average for a new college grad. Now, even in your WILDEST dreams, you know that public safety’s compensation would NEVER get cut in half from the level it’s at today. You would be very lucky to cut their compensation by 10%-15%. In fact, the odds are that their average compensations won’t go down – but only continue to go up!

So if public safety compensation, as compared with compensations of other paid positions throughout the economy, is compensated at a level commensurate with an entry requirement of a college education – then GED’s and HS grads should be eliminated from the selection pool.

That way the Chief or the Captain could no longer get their GED sons hired for a high paying job. It would be a victory in the war against nepotism, which we know runs rampant in public safety hiring practices.

I rest my case.

LIC, you are correct about the Feds compensation. The model for the California RAGEWUS is similar to a RICO violation in federal law. 🙂

“If we taxpayers paid ditch diggers $40 an hour, should we limit the jobs to college graduates? No.”

That’s not a relevant argument.

Cops and firefighters aren’t ditch diggers. Their decisions impact the safety of our citizens. College grads are more productive and make better decisions in the workplace than GED’s and HS grads. Ask any employer. And it is EASY to find enough qualified college grads to apply for cop or FF jobs. We don’t need GED’s or HS grads. And it is a WASTE OF PUBLIC FUNDS to screen the applications submitted by GED’s and HS grads when there are more than enough college grads in the selection pool.

There has been NO COMPENSATION REFORM in the ranks of public safety. You might take a little pension income away – but they always make it up somewhere else – like in salary or health care benefits.

The problem is corruption in government between the public unions and the politicians. If you want to reform public safety compensation you need to focus on that. Otherwise you are spinning your wheels, my friend.

A “pensionable pay” freeze DOES work. We are doing it NOW in my city of San Diego. It takes backbone and often a city voter initiative, but it can be done. Not theory — FACT.”

Richard, for all your self-proclaimed expertise you appear pretty darned naive sometimes.

To quiet down the anti-pension crusades that are so prevalent today various local governments are either forcing public safety to pay higher contributions for their pensions or implementing ‘pension freezes’.

But what you fail to tell us is that at the same time these local governments give public safety VERY GENEROUS salary and step-pay increases AND supplement their health care benefits which completely offset any financial benefit that the taxpayers may receive from the so-called ‘pension reform’. You need give the readers BOTH sides to the story here, Richard. Pension reform is not necessarily COMPENSATION REFORM! Your comments confuse me as to which side you really support?

So you are claiming that GED’s and HS grads have better ‘temperments’ and cleaner records than people with enough aspiration to better themselves with a college education? lol. Are you serious??? Most employers concur that a higher educated and brighter workforce is a more productive and successful workforce. You appear to disagree. So I am beginning to question your opinions. They don’t make sense to me.

Restricting public safety applicants to those with a MINIMUM of a 4-year degree is very sensible and it would provide the citizens with a higher quality of service. Each opening would STILL garner at least 400 applications – more than enough to find highly qualified applicants. Name ONE OTHER JOB that pays a starting compensation of $150,000 that allows GED’s and HS grads to apply??? You can’t.

Sorry, Richard. Some of your opinions make no sense to me.

LetItCollapse
You’re covering ground I already responded to.
1. Your assumption is flawed. It is NOT inevitable that we pay our firefighters six figure incomes and opulent pensions. We’ve proven that in San Diego.
BTW, contracting out firefighting is an even better, if more radical solution. When (and only when) the city can’t afford to pay for firefighters because of salary and benefits costs, privatization may finally (by necessity) become a viable option.
2. We don’t want or need a bunch of overeducated fire fighters. I’ve already discussed the reasons. If we taxpayers paid ditch diggers $40 an hour, should we limit the jobs to college graduates? No.
BTW, nepotism would still rule — but first the firefighter parent would need to get their kids the cheapest, most useless, easiest BA out there to meet your “college grad” criteria. We taxpayers would doubtless pay for 80% of the cost of the degree, to no purpose.

Firefighters are different. We could be SWAMPED by good applicants if we wanted ’em. The supply-demand ratio is quite different for cops vs. firefighters.

That’s why in San Diego we’ve put our ff new-hires on 401k plans (VERY GENEROUS — full matching up to 9% of pay), but kept the cops on DB pension plans.

A “pensionable pay” freeze DOES work. We are doing it NOW in my city of San Diego. It takes backbone and often a city voter initiative, but it can be done. Not theory — FACT.

No matter how much a city pays its employees, they can buy a bigger house and more land if they live outside the city. Most government (and private) workers can’t live too far, because of the 22 day a month commute. But FF’s only commute to work about 6-7 days a month (they do double shifts to get more days off in a row), so they can live further way. In San Diego, some choose to live east in Alpine or other such areas, but MOST live in North County or the Temecula region in the next county.

Think I’m wrong? Assuming you live near or in a city, go ask the guys down at the fire station where they live. I GUARANTEE you that most do not live in the city in which they work. If it’s a smaller city like Poway or National City, almost NONE live in the city.

A couple days ago our taxpayer issues committee had the San Diego city auditor come and speak – and answer questions – about police and fire departments. He pointed out that the firefighters didn’t want more firefighters hired because it would cut back their overtime, overtime which they were “used to” getting. But when the fire chief was asked by the auditor if doing all that overtime would degrade their capabilities, the chief readily pointed out that doing a lot of overtime was not difficult at all.