Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado, said SB168 would indemnify emergency responders who damage a drone during firefighting, air ambulance or search-and-rescue operations.

Earlier this month, aerial fire crews responding to a blaze that swept across Interstate 15 north of San Bernardino had to pull back after five drones were spotted above the fire.

It was the fourth time in a month that a drone had disrupted wildfire response in the region, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service. Gaines introduced SB167 earlier this summer to increases fines and introduces the possibility of jail time for drone use that interferes with firefighting efforts. Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, co-authored both bills.

“Private drones don’t belong around these emergencies. That is the first message I want to get out,” Gaines said in a news release. “But if one gets damaged or destroyed because it’s in the way then that can’t lead to financial penalty for the people trying to save lives and property. It’s unfortunate, but that’s all it is. People can replace drones, but we can’t replace a life. When our rescuers are risking their own lives to protect us, I want them thinking about safety, not liability.”

Gaines also said it’s his hope that the advent of effective “jamming” technology could keep drones away from emergency response areas and flight paths.

He went on to say that “public education efforts could ensure that the safest, least-damaging methods for avoiding or disabling unauthorized drones will be the primary methods used in these crises.”

In a phone interview on Friday, Gaines said its his understanding that the federal government is working on a technology that would jam a certain frequency used by private drones.

Some government agencies are already using drones, or have plans to do so, to monitor areas including wildfires.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

[The] firefighters union says the cuts will lead to fewer job applicants, much in the way recruitment has slowed for the short-staffed police department, which is dealing with the same pension cuts. …

“City Hall is hell bent on doing to the fire department what they have done to the police department and the results will be the same; firefighters will leave San Jose and 911 emergency response times will increase,” firefighters union president Joel Phelan said in a statement.

But just beneath the San Jose story was a link to a Los Angeles Times story about a flap over how L.A.’s city fire department was handling the hiring of new firefighters. It noted that there had been 10,000 applicants seeking to be in a fire trainee recruit class of 300 people.

10,000! Oh, yeah, reduced benefits in San Jose will keep jobs unfilled.

By Dave Roberts

When you take on the firefighters’ union, it helps to have an asbestos hide.

Kris Hunt, executive director for the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, has waged a number of political battles over the years, including once receiving a death threat. But her recent battle against a $197 tax hike in a small fire district on the eastern edge of the Bay Area turned out to be the nastiest yet.

She was slandered as a “community terrorist” and repeatedly called a liar. One blogger placed her and five other tax opponents (including myself) on a hit list of people to contact if your house burns down. Hunt was told that a board member asked a staffer to find out her address.

Hunt jokes that she’s shopping for alligators for her moat.

“I have never been in one that was made so personal before,” she said. “Usually people will argue with you, but this thing actually devolved into name calling. They are still at it, that we are lying. Wow. They can’t accept reality. This is probably going to continue just because we have hit where they hurt. And when they didn’t have a solid argument they really let it get personal, and that is unfortunate.”

As for being on a hit list, Hunt said, “That’s another level of viciousness. By that time I decided the only way to deal with this, if you aren’t going to be able to convince these people, then you make fun. I said that I am number one on the list — I am bragging about it. That seemed the only way to deal with this.”

But she also acknowledged, “There’s a level of concern only in that there are crazy people out there. People can go over the line and get very emotional.”

Despite fire tax proponents spending $177,000 (to zero spending by opponents), the tax hike failed to gain a majority of the vote, let alone the two-thirds required to pass.

It was always going to be a tough sell asking for an additional $2,200 per home over 10 years when most people have lost 39 percent of their net worth in the last three years and many are still staggering from the aftershocks of the Great Recession. But the district board decided to go for it anyway, doing the bidding of the firefighters union as it seeks to increase salaries, benefits and jobs.

Fire tax hikes were not that popular throughout the state. In addition to the failure of the East Contra Costa tax hike, a $100 tax hike in Higgins, a $40 hike in North Auburn-Ophir, a $79 tax in Placer Hills and a $59 tax in Crest all failed.

There were two successful fire tax measures: a $150 tax in Newcastle and a four-year extension of a $65 tax in San Mateo County.

Tax-paid propaganda

Despite the economic malaise headwinds, fire tax measures have several built-in advantages for passage. Foremost is the ability to use taxpayer dollars to propagandize for more taxpayer dollars under the guise of an “education” campaign. The East Contra Costa Fire Protection District paid $120,000 to a campaign marketing firm. That money could have funded a firefighter for a year. It instead provided alarmist fliers to every home in the district and a series of tax-hike sales meetings.

“Alarmism” was the theme of the tax-hike campaign. The district’s first flier kicked it off with an official-looking brochure containing emergency contact numbers, a bold headline on a flaming red background, “Attention: East County Resident” and a 470-word message from the police chief explaining why a tax hike is necessary.

The district’s second taxpayer-provided flier was another official-looking piece headlined, “A Critical Update from Your Fire District.” It argued that the district has a deficit because of a 35 percent decline in revenues in the past four years and because the district receives half the property tax revenue of other districts. There’s no mention of the skyrocketing cost of retirement benefits as a contributing factor to the deficit. But there is a rebuttal to an argument that the district “should slash firefighter salaries,” stating that they make 71 percent less than firefighters in a neighboring district.

Another big advantage for tax hike proponents is the firefighters union. The International Association of Firefighters Local 1230 poured $44,000 into the campaign, resulting in more alarmist fliers. One door hanger headlined “IT’S AN EMERGENCY!” warned that without the tax hike “your health and home [will be] at risk” due to longer response times [photo of house on fire] and insurance rates will increase by thousands of dollars per year [photo of four $1,000 bills burning].” Another flier featured a large photo of an auto accident.

It’s telling that the person who presented the pro-tax side in a Measure S debate was not the fire district president or a board member, but instead the president of the local firefighters union, who is a fire captain in another fire district. Vince Wells, who led the tax-hike campaign, is also a contributor to the fiscal problem resulting in the need for tax hike campaigns. Last year Wells received from taxpayers: $103,635 in base salary, $20,912 in overtime, $15,794 in health care, $30,468 contribution to his pension and $15,990 in miscellaneous compensation. However, he does contribute 26 percent of his salary to his pension.

Cushy retirement

Firefighters can retire at age 50 and receive a pension equivalent to 3 percent of their pay for every year worked. That equates to 90 percent of final salary for someone who started at age 20. And that adds up. Forty percent of Contra Costa County government retirees receiving pensions of $100,000 or more used to work for a fire district. More than half of those receiving pensions of $200,000 or more are former fire district employees. And the top pension profiteer, enjoying more than $300,000 a year, is a former fire chief.

Retirement expenses in the East County fire district increased 26 percent this year and are projected to increase another 30 percent in the next three years. At that point, one out of every four dollars spent on firefighting will go for retirement. The Fire Protection District is morphing into the Retirement Protection District. Ironically, not even the $100 million tax hike would have been enough to stop the fiscal hemorrhaging. The district was still projected to return to deficit spending in four years.

The hero card

Another advantage is the residual good will for firefighters from 9/11 — the hero card. One billboard shows a smoky firefighter who looks like he’s been through hell, with the message: “When others ran out, he rushed in. When the Fire District asked for 54 cents a day, you laid him off!”

With Measure S receiving just 46 percent of the vote, the district is making good on its threats of Armageddon. Half of the district’s six stations will close and 15 firefighters will be laid off on July 1, reducing the force to 27.

Chief Hugh Henderson warned that response times to the outlying parts of the 250-square-mile district could more than double. Despite that, the board — again doing the bidding of the firefighters union — rejected the option of leaving four stations open with two firefighters in each. Instead, they chose to go with three stations with three firefighters each. That will provide a reduced workload for the firefighters but will increase response times in certain areas.

Tax-hike opponents are offering numerous suggestions to cut costs while continuing to deliver good service. They include privatizing fire protection, consolidating the fire districts in the county, serious pension reform, hiring more on-call reserve and volunteer firefighters, rectifying the top-heavy staffing, asking the cities in the district to donate and filing for bankruptcy. It remains to be seen whether the board investigates any of these options. It will probably depend on what the union wants. Politicians defy public-sector unions at their peril.

But taxpayers from Wisconsin to San Diego to East Contra Costa are fighting back against government of, by and for the government unions. East County fire board President Kevin Romick said, in regard to a county water tax hike that he opposed: “Every once in a while you’ve got to stand up to the bureaucratic behemoth and tell them it’s not right.” Fifty-six percent of his constituents agreed, voting down Romick’s tax hike.

Note: This article was corrected. It originally said that Vince Wells contributed “zero” to his pension. In fact, he contributes 26 percent of his salary. We regret the error.

This article first appeared in City Journal.

By STEVEN GREENHUT

On Memorial Day, a suicidal man waded into San Francisco Bay outside the city of Alameda and stood there for about an hour, neck-deep in chilly water, as about 75 bystanders watched. Local police and firefighters were called to the scene, but they refused to help. After the man drowned, the assembled “first responders” also refused to wade into the water to retrieve his body; they left that job for a bystander.

The incident sparked widespread outrage in northern California, and the response by the fire department and police only intensified the anger. The firefighters blamed local budget cuts for denying them the training and equipment necessary for cold-water rescues. The police said that they didn’t know if the man was dangerous and therefore couldn’t risk the safety of their officers. After a local TV news crew asked him whether he would save a drowning child in the bay, Alameda fire chief Ricci Zombeck gave an answer that made him the butt of local talk-show mockery: “Well, if I was off duty, I would know what I would do, but I think you’re asking me my on-duty response, and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures, because that’s what’s required by our department to do.”

If you stand a better chance of being rescued by the official rescuers when they are off duty, it naturally leads people to question the purpose of these departments, which consume the lion’s share of city budgets and whose employees—in California, anyway—receive exceedingly handsome salaries. In Orange County, where I worked for a newspaper for 11 years, the average pay and benefits package for a firefighter is $175,000 a year. Virtually every Orange County deputy sheriff earns, in pay and overtime, over $100,000 a year, with a significant percentage earning more than $150,000. In many cities, police and fire budgets eat up more than three-quarters of the city budget, and that doesn’t count the unfunded liabilities for generous pension packages, which can top 90 percent of a worker’s final year’s pay. It’s hard to argue that these departments are so starved for funds that they’re entitled to stop saving lives.

After I wrote a newspaper column deploring the Alameda incident, I received many e-mails from self-identified police officers and firefighters. Though a few were appalled by the new public-safety culture they saw on display, most defended it; some even defended Zombeck’s words. Many made reference to a fire in San Francisco that week that had claimed the life of at least one firefighter. The message was clear: Don’t criticize firefighters, because they put their lives on the line protecting you. There’s no doubt that firefighters and police have tough and sometimes dangerous jobs, but that doesn’t mean that the public has no business criticizing them—especially as they become infected with the bureaucratic mind-set spread by public-sector union activism. The unions defend their members’ every action; to the extent that they admit a problem, they always blame tight budgets.

The unions that represent first responders also have a legislative agenda to reduce oversight and accountability. I recall when a state assembly member closely aligned with public-safety unions contacted me about a union-backed bill that was too egregious even for his taste. Sponsored by a firefighters’ union after a district attorney prosecuted an on-duty firefighter for alleged misbehavior that led to a death, the bill in its original form would have offered immunity to firefighters even for gross negligence on the job. The legislation failed after the media started paying attention and ignited a contentious public debate. Perhaps the outrage at the Alameda incident will likewise cause a far-reaching discussion—one that helps restore the principle that the real constituency for public safety is the public, not bureaucrats and government workers.

Note: This first appeared in City Journal California.

JULY 1, 2011

TOM GRAY

Motherhood, the flag, and firemen — they pretty much go together in the pantheon of political symbolism. Except maybe in Alameda. In that city of 74,000, just across the bay from San Francisco, firefighters have been getting anything but love from the public. Some 200 residents showed up at the Alameda City Council’s June 21 meeting to watch the council approve a new contract with the firefighters’ union. Most of the crowd disapproved of the deal, preferring that the firefighters take pay cuts. At the very least, they wanted the council to delay final approval until the public could have a closer look at the contract’s terms.

The Alamedans found an ally in city auditor Kevin Kearney, who offered a blunt assessment of the contract and its impact on the city’s treasury: “Seventy percent of our budget is tied up with guys who make too much damned money.” Kearney shouldn’t bother trying to pay his respects at a fireman’s funeral; Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s public defender and an outspoken pension-reform advocate, tried to do that a few weeks ago at a service for two fallen firefighters at the city’s St. Mary’s Cathedral. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross reported, Adachi was standing with other local leaders outside the cathedral when, according to witnesses, “a large firefighter in uniform came up to Adachi and asked him to leave, at the request of a member of the fallen firefighter’s family.” Adachi held his ground until the same officer returned a couple of minutes later and told him, “We don’t want to have any problems.” Adachi took the hint and left.

Liberals Upset Too

A liberal Democrat in a labor-friendly town, Adachi has become an unlikely hero in the fledgling pension-reform movement. He took on the public-sector unions last November with a ballot initiative that would have required city employees to contribute more to their retirement and health-care plans and raised the retirement age for public-safety workers. Prop. B lost; Adachi has already launched a “Son of B” campaign.

Are the controversies in Alameda and San Francisco isolated incidents? Alameda is certainly something of a special case. The fire department drew criticism last month after its firefighters stood idle on shore while a man drowned—in an apparent suicide—off an Alameda beach. The fire chief resigned last year after he was found to be helping himself to free city gas for his personal cars.

Then again, we might be seeing the first skirmishes in a new kind of class war. Signs of a growing restiveness with the demands of public-safety unions and the costs of fire and police pensions are appearing across the state. In San Jose, the Santa Clara County grand jury recently criticized a common type of featherbedding—sending fire trucks and crews to respond to medical emergency calls when an ambulance would suffice—and suggested that firefighters’ unions were more interested in preserving jobs than in efficiency. Last November, Bakersfield voters cut pension benefits for new police and fire employees. In the San Diego suburb of Carlsbad, residents passed a measure requiring a public vote on any future pension hikes for public-safety workers, thus protecting a two-tier system, with lower benefits for new hires, that the city recently established. And just last week, Costa Mesa passed a tough budget requiring cops to work five days a week rather than four. The change so infuriated police chief Steve Staveley—who had been earning $298,000 a year in total compensation—that he quit.

Pushback

Expect to see plenty more pushback against public-safety unions as California’s economic slog drags on and local governments struggle to pay the bills. It’s not that the public doesn’t value the work of firefighters and police officers. Most people simply didn’t realize until recently how generous the pay and pensions are for public-safety work. Police and fire compensation stands far above the average for other public-sector jobs. In San Francisco, for instance, the average pension is $108,552 for a firefighter and $95,016 for a cop. The average for all other municipal employees is $41,136. In fact, public-safety pensions skew the average city pension to the point that it’s higher than what the average working San Franciscan earns each year: $46,272 versus $44,373 per capita.

Police and fire unions may resent the public’s sudden turn against them, but they have only themselves to blame. They long ago mastered the art of kingmaking in local politics, marginalizing critics while rewarding friends with campaign cash and priceless endorsements. Today, the average working Californian—to say nothing of people struggling to find work—can assume that the police officer citing him for speeding is living in a different world, financially secure and too comfortable by half. That situation is bound to breed more strife until pay and pensions are brought back to levels that the public sees as fair and affordable.

Tom Gray is a former editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Daily News and a former senior editor at Investor’s Business Daily.

Today firemen and teachers in Los Angeles staged protests against proposed budget cuts. The L.A. Times reports: