“[Justices will] hear arguments over whether the union can require payment from teachers it represents in contract talks. The justices could support the status quo or issue a ruling that only changes payments to CTA. Union leaders everywhere fear, however, a broader decision that would squeeze their own treasuries and diminish public labor’s political clout at all levels of government.”

Some expect it even more than others. Which brings us to the media’s conventional theories as to why Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was defeated in the Democratic primary on Saturday in a landslide by state Sen. David Ige. Yes, Abercrombie angered many Democrats when he refused the request of dying, beloved Sen. Daniel Inouye to appoint Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa as his successor. Yes, Abercrombie wasn’t particularly skilled in selling a positive image.

But if he hadn’t taken on the powerful Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) in 2011 and forced teachers to take a 5 percent pay cut to make the state budget balance, he probably wouldn’t have faced Ige or a serious challenger in the primary. A Honolulu Star-Advertiser analysis from July 31, 2011, notes that Abercrombie only wanted teachers to share the same pain as other public employees:

Abercrombie imposed a “last, best and final offer” that roughly matches the pay cuts taken by the state’s largest public employee union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association.

This led the HSTA to seek out Ige to run for governor. In February, the union formalized its support, giving a huge boost to the obscure lawmaker.

And now Abercrombie is only the second Hawaii governor to ever lose a re-election bid.

CA teachers spared the pension pain facing other public employees

The contrast with Jerry Brown could not be more instructive.

In 2011, the California governor unveiled a pension reform proposal that was unusually ambitious. In an approach similar to Abercrombie’s on the 2011 Hawaii state budget, Brown’s plan held that there should be shared pain to address  a fiscal problem — in this case, the long-term underfunding of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and some local government pension funds. That translated into legislation under which affected employees eventually will have to roughly split the total cost of their pensions with taxpayers.

But this year’s law to shore up the California State Teachers’ Retirement System ignores that framework. Instead, taxpayers will foot 90 percent of the cost of new CalSTRS funding and teachers only 10 percent.

More $ meant for struggling students heads to CA teachers

In California, some public employees are more equal than others. Jerry Brown figured that out long ago.

In Hawaii, the governor only figured that out Saturday.

Meanwhile, there’s more evidence that the Local Control Funding Formula education reform approved last year was a ruse cooked up by Brown, the CTA and CFT to free up more funds for teacher compensation — not primarily a way to help target funds for struggling students. This is from the Sac Bee:

Sacramento-area school districts have begun giving teachers pay raises and bonuses, often retroactively, as they receive more funding from the state.

Twin Rivers Unified, Elk Grove Unified and El Dorado Union High are among the many local school districts that have negotiated raises with their unions that reach back to last year or beyond. The pay hikes are on top of the “step-and-column” increases traditionally given to educators annually based on their years of service and level of education.

The raises come after a 2012 voter-approve tax hike and a multiyear state plan to increase school funding through a new formula intended to direct money to low-income students and English-language learners.

As Cal Watchdog noted last week, this same scenario is unfolding in Los Angeles Unified.

It is not what voters were promised when they backed tax hikes in 2012. It is not what the media were told would happen when the Local Control Funding Formula was enacted in 2013.

But it’s par for the course. In California, as in Hawaii, unions dominate government — especially teacher unions. Mess with their compensation, and you’ll pay a price. And if that means other unions play the role of second-class citizens in Democratic Party politics, so be it.

Here’s the lead of the story:

“A vandal smashed the window of San Luis Obispo Mayor Jan Marx’s Prius Monday while she attended a luncheon Rotary Club meeting at the Madonna Inn.

“It was the only vehicle damaged in the busy parking lot.

“Although the mayor was quick to say she has no idea who was behind the vandalism, it occurred shortly after the City Council decided to appeal a recent ruling that could require the city to restore binding arbitration to the city’s charter.”

PERB thwarted San Luis Obispo voters; council chose to appeal

Requiring binding arbitration to resolve differences between elected officials and public employee unions often leads to split-the-difference resolutions of pay disputes. It can make it close to impossible for city leaders to, yunno, lead — binding them to a future in which their employees’ pay always goes up, up and away.

San Luis Obispo residents understood this; in 2006, for example, the police officers’ union rejected a 20 percent, four-year raise, knowing it could get more after arbitration. That is why residents voted overwhelmingly to strip the binding arbitration requirement from city law in 2011.  But a PERB administrative judge recently ruled that the public vote must be thrown out because the city charter can’t be changed to ban binding arbitration — without binding arbitration!

Sheesh. Shades of PERB rulings that existing state laws should be subject to collective bargaining.

As former San Luis Obispo Councilman Andrew Carter explains here, this ridiculous PERB ruling is what the City Council voted to appeal.

LOL: No evidence, only one group of suspects

Back to the SLO Tribune story and its coverage of the vandalizing of the PERB-doubting mayor’s car. The piece can only be read as building off a 100 percent assumption a cop or firefighter was to blame:

“The presidents of the city’s firefighters and police unions issued a joint written statement Tuesday expressing dismay over the vandalism to Marx’s car.

“‘We have nothing but the highest respect for our elected officials and the process they are working through. The decision to appeal the recent PERB decision was not a surprise to us,’ they wrote. ‘We understand why the City is appealing the decision, and we respect the process of the appeal. We are upset that it appears someone may have intentionally broke the Mayor’s car window, and we hope that the person responsible is brought to justice.'”

Yeah, sure you do. Then you’d have one less person paying dues.

“There is a lot of disenchantment  among proponents of HSR; the voters have turned against the project; the politicians are looking for a graceful way to exit from what is now regarded as a ‘loser.’  Here is the solution, step by step — a simple and popular solution:

“1. The Legislature passes an initiative which is designed to go before the voters for approval; [the Legislature can do this; no signature gathering is necessary]; the measure could go on the November, 2014, ballot; there is time;

“2. The measure would be blissfully simple and would provide as follows:  all rounds remaining in the Proposition 1A bond fund are to be redesignated and transferred to a new bond fund and placed in that fund; the proceeds are to be used for the following four purposes:  water projects; law enforcement infrastructure improvements; freeway repairs; school building construction; each to receive 25% (avoids squabbling);

“3. This is a win-win for the Legislature:  popular programs that Demos and GOP both support; bipartisan approval;

“4. The voters will love it-high priority programs, much more popular than the ill-fated hsr;

“5. And look at the nature of the  projects:  all infrastructure, using union labor, thousands of jobs! 

“6. It passes; everyone’s a hero! LET’S DO IT!”

Upon examination, not much of a union concession

I don’t like the union payoff much, but it’s a logical way to grease this compromise to approval. And any big state infrastructure projects will have PLAs, so it’s not much of a concession, at least if you support capital-improvement spending on “water projects; law enforcement infrastructure improvements; freeway repairs; school building construction.”

How unusual: a trial lawyer proposing a way to quickly wrap up a case for which he’s probably billing $400 an hour.

Good for you, Mike!

Along with then-Mayor Jerry Sanders and then-Councilman Carl DeMaio, Faulconer, 47, was a key member of a cadre of San Diego GOP pols who brought sweeping reforms to City Hall in recent years. But in this campaign, he did all he could to obscure his party membership. He wooed the police officers’ union and celebrated its support. He defended gay marriage and in general avoided every last social conservative issue.

And while he won decisively, it’s worth noting that Faulconer beat an inexperienced, second-tier Democratic opponent. David Alvarez, 33, only became a known figure in city politics in 2010, when he won a City Council seat that traditionally goes to union-backed Latinos. The list of San Diego Democrats with higher profiles and better resumes is a long one: former Councilwoman Donna Frye, Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, state Sens. Ben Hueso and Marty Block, Rep. Susan Davis and interim Mayor Todd Gloria.

Faulconer will serve the remaining 33 months of the term that former Rep. Bob Filner won over DeMaio in 2012. Filner  resigned in August 2013 after an ugly sexual-harassment scandal.

Faulconer, a former communications consultant and San Diego State University student body president, will face tough sledding with any conservative reform agenda. He is certain to be replaced on an interim basis on the City Council by a Democrat, giving them a veto-proof 6-3 majority until Faulconer’s council term ends in December.

Alvarez and at least two of those other Democrats are interested in or ready to nullify or impede three voter-approved reforms, starting with a money-saving measure in which city workers compete with private firms for the right to provide certain government services.

And in the June primary and November general election, Democrats have a solid shot at winning Faulconer’s coastal seat and a central San Diego district configured to encourage the election of an Asian-American council member. The Republican now representing the latter district, Lorie Zapf, is running for Faulconer’s old seat.

Democrats may soon hold 7 of 9 San Diego council seats

By year’s end, Democrats could have seven of the nine City Council seats.

Even with Faulconer’s election, many business interests already have given up on the City Council as a constructive force for job creation and economic growth. They’re using ballot measures to try to overturn City Council decisions to vastly increase fees on commercial development and to rezone a shipyard industrial area in a way that business owners say will destroy thousands of jobs.

Direct democracy appears to be their only chance of getting big things done going forward. San Diego’s parallels with California at large are plain. A well-crafted, conservative ballot measure can still win passage, if voters believe it is constructive or in their best interests.

As for Faulconer, he may be forced to play defense until his 2016 re-election bid — fighting to protect the reforms that until 2012 made San Diego seem a poster city for small-government activism.

“Californians could be faced in November with a proposal to dramatically alter the pension and benefit system for public employees. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has submitted a statewide ballot initiative that would allow government agencies to negotiate changes to current employees’ future retirement benefits, reversing the long-standing principle that once a public employee is hired, his or her retirement benefits cannot be reduced. 

“Public employee unions are already gearing up for a major fight over Reed’s initiative, which he could put on the ballot as soon as 2014 (or as late as 2016) if he gathers the requisite signatures. No matter the timing, voters will surely be inundated with intense propaganda from both sides. That’s why Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, charged with writing the title and 100-word summary for all ballot measures — including Reed’s pension initiative — should play it straight. Give voters clear, factual information, free of spin.

“Last year, Harris took heat for drafting a ballot measure summary — also on a pension reform proposal — that many considered skewed against the initiative’s fiscally conservative proponents. Her summation pushed the limits of interpretation and painted the proposal in the worst light, critics said. She even chose to define public employees as “teachers, nurses and peace officers” — who, according to polls, just happen to be among the most respected of all public employees. She neglected to mention the parking enforcement officers, tax collectors and DMV clerks who would also be affected by pension changes.”

A test for a possible future national candidate

This normally would be a no-brainer for Kamala Harris — write a slanted summary, keep sucking up to unions, keep moving up the CA Dem food chain. But if she wants to be president or vice president some day, and that is what a lot of people are hearing, she has to show she’s not a complete union tool.

Or, as CalWatchdog founder Steve Greenhut put it, that she’s not a “totalitarian.” Here’s what he wrote last year after Harris’ first pension reform monkey-wrenching:

“We expect all sides in politics to fight hard, given the stakes involved, but our system rests on the broad acceptance of a set of fairly applied rules. We know, for instance, that no matter how nasty the coming presidential election becomes, the loser ultimately will cede power after the final count is in. This isn’t a kleptocracy, where the only redress for the losing side is to take to the streets in a violent revolt.

“Unfortunately, California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ recent misuse of power to provide a dishonest ballot title and summary for proposed pension-reform initiatives, which she opposes, comes right out of the totalitarian playbook, where those wielding power recognize no rules of decency or fairness.”

We shall see if Harris has a shred of good faith in her. The odds at the Imaginary Politics Gambling House:

— 51 percent chance that she does a completely slanted, outrageous ballot description, as bad as last year’s.

–44 percent chance that she does one that is clearly slanted but that might survive a court challenge.

–5 percent chance that she writes a fair ballot summary.

That’s life in California — just a one in 20 shot that honest democracy will trump union hegemony.

“Mayor Michael Bloomberg today took aim at the city’s rising pension and health costs, calling what he dubbed the ‘labor-electoral complex’ the most pressing threat to New York in the final major speech as mayor. …

“’Right now our country appears to be in the early stages of a growing fiscal crisis that, if nothing is done, will extract a terrible toll on the next generation,’ said Mr. Bloomberg. ‘It is one of the biggest threats facing cities because it is forcing government into a fiscal straight jacket that severely limits its ability to provide an effective social safety net and to invest in the next generation.’

“‘The costs of today’s benefits cannot be sustained for another generation–not without inflicting real harm on our citizens, on our children and our grandchildren,’ he added.”

Jerry Brown has never been this honest

What a contrast with California’s governor, who is enjoying the bizarre speculation that he might derail Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Brown has a reputation for candor. Yet he rarely talks candidly about who really runs the Golden State. The fact that union power is a big reason that poverty is at a 70-year high in California? Jer can’t be bothered to mention that, or even allude to it.

And while Brown did secure modest pension reforms in 2012, he didn’t do so while placing them in context — by explaining what was lost because of costly benefits. Bloomberg put the need for pension changes in context:

“Over the past 12 years, the mayor said, the city’s pension costs have soared from $1.5 billion to $8.2 billion – a nearly 500 percent increase – siphoning off $7 billion he argued could have been used to fund for more affordable housing, classrooms or tax cuts. And while many other cities require municipal employees to chip in for at least part of their health care costs, he said the city’s unions have remained frustratingly stubborn.

“’More and more mayors and governors in both political parties are asking across the country, which is the first real sign of a crack in the “labor-electoral complex” that has traditionally stymied reform,’ he said, dubbing a term aides said was a reference to President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which the ex-president warned of the “military-industrial complex.'” …

“’We need them to look ahead and to address the needs of tomorrow instead of being prisoners to the labor contracts of yesteryear. Simply put, our pension and health care system must be modernized to be sustained,’” he added, vowing to continue to work on the issue after he leaves office.

“Mr. Bloomberg ended by urging Mr. de Blasio to follow in his recent footsteps and refuse any new labor contract that includes salary increases unless it comes with lower benefits payments–arguing that his successor will have unique leverage over the city’s unions.”

Mayor will be libertarian icon — albeit a deeply flawed one

Like just about every libertarian I know, I’m torn by Bloomberg. His nanny-state activism and his love of eminent domain are appalling.

Nevertheless, given his success as NYC mayor, his emphasis on the importance and primacy of the private sector in improving quality of life and his emphasis on government efficiency are going to pay dividends for believers in liberty for decades to come.

So it amounts to one final bon-bon that in his farewell speech, Bloomberg reminded Californians of what a truly blunt government executive sounds like — not a media-savvy simulacrum like Jerry Brown.

But for three reasons, I don’t think the prospects for this reform are dead at all. I dealt with the first two in a U-T San Diego column today.

The first: My apologies to Jon Coupal and company, but I really think they were too clever by half with their measure last year:

” … the last time reformers brought paycheck protection before California voters — via Proposition 32 on the November 2012 ballot — they didn’t trust voters enough to just give them a straightforward up-or-down vote on whether union members should have a say on the use of their dues. Instead, the initiative included legally dubious provisions restricting corporate campaign spending that gave critics ample ammunition to depict it as a deceptive power play.

“The measure lost in a landslide. But state voters came fairly close to passing cleaner, simpler versions of paycheck protection in 1998 and 2005.”

The second: There has never been a more egregious case of union power trumping public sentiment than in this year’s Legislature:

“The appalling story of former Los Angeles Unified elementary schoolteacher Mark Berndt would make a simple version of paycheck protection much easier to pass in 2014 or 2016. After evidence turned up indicating Berndt had been feeding sperm to his students, district officials had no choice but to pay Berndt $35,000 to get him to quit because of job protections demanded and won by United Teachers Los Angeles.

“When the Berndt case triggered a public backlash, the state Legislature earlier this year passed a teacher-discipline measure that was billed as a smart way to keep perverts away from students. Instead, it actually gave teachers even more job protections.

“Nothing better illustrates the unions’ chokehold on Sacramento than this. If the CTA and the CFT had less money for political fights, maybe, just maybe, the public would have gotten its way — and parents wouldn’t have cause to think that state lawmakers worry more about protecting predatory teachers than the students of such teachers.”

The third reason is that quite a few veteran state journalists no longer have illusions about how unions have turned governance, especially at the local level, into something akin to looting. It’s no longer just Dan Walters and his occasional contrarian refusal to accept the surface motives claimed by Jerry Brown, Darrell Steinberg and John Perez. Instead, it’s the Bay Area News Group’s increasingly radicalized columnist and editorial writer Daniel Borenstein and a wave of younger reporters at the San Jose Mercury-News, the Sacramento Bee and many online sites.

Even L.A. Times knows which way the wind blows

And even though their concern is always muted, there’s plenty of evidence that the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times is worried, too.

Consider this editorial from last week, headlined “Spend money on the students it’s meant to help.” It makes the same basic point as my CalWatchdog story from three weeks ago about Gov. Jerry Brown’s bid to direct more funds to struggling students being hijacked to put more money in operating budgets for teacher compensation:

“Under the draft rules, if administrators spent all the extra funding on teacher raises, middle-class students would be receiving more of the benefit than needy ones. If those students’ scores rose even slightly, the district could claim it had fulfilled the requirements of the third option.”

If anything puts the spotlight on the gap between union Democrats and real, honest-to-God social-justice Democrats, it is this.

If unions follow up on their Mark Berndt scandal power play by hijacking what’s billed as the most socially progressive education reform in California history, I think opposition to a clean “paycheck protection” bill fades in the newsrooms around the Golden State.

If it doesn’t, God help California. There will be nothing unions can’t get away with.

The truth? It’s an assault on the middle class

Allowing BART employees higher salaries and benefits on their already-high compensation will only result in increasing costs and increased fares for the riders.

It’s too easy to negotiate with other people’s money, and even easier to end up giving it away.

“SACRAMENTO — The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike.

“Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share.

“’Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,’ he said. ‘All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.’

“DeSaulnier, who called himself ‘pro-labor and pro-transit,’ said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times.”

Now when will minority lawmakers wake up?

The fact that affluent white Democratic lawmakers are beginning to internalize that union power isn’t always benign raises hope that California will finally have the much bigger political catharsis that it deserves: the eruption over the fact that the teachers unions which run Sacramento don’t care about struggling Latino and African-American students who make up a majority of kids at public schools.

I wrote about this last year for City Journal:

“[The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers] enforce a Sacramento status quo that holds minorities in contempt and elevates teachers’ and unions’ interests above all others.

“Consider the modus operandi of nearly every California school district. Where are the best teachers most needed? In struggling schools with impoverished, mostly black and Latino students. But thanks to union power, where are those teachers concentrated? In affluent, safe schools. The struggling schools wind up with newly hired teachers and, often, bad or troubled teachers who couldn’t make the grade at better schools but who, thanks to union rules, can’t be fired. The problem is even worse than it appears, because revenue-deprived school districts often lay off the most junior teachers to ease budget woes. Some schools lose most of their teaching corps, destroying any continuity or momentum a school in a poor neighborhood may have managed to build. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the practice led to a successful ACLU lawsuit to end the ‘last hired, first fired’ policy in poor neighborhoods.”

Speaker Perez: Is this really ‘social justice’?

Attention, John Perez: When are you going to stop siding with the CTA and the CFT over the kids in your district?

Gloria Romero — like Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat — is right: The California public schools system’s practice of giving more weight to the interests of adult employees than of students deserves to be seen as a civil-rights issue, not a political scrap. If the BART dust-up makes even a few more elected Democrats think about this bigger picture, it will be for the good of nearly all Californians. The K-12 status quo has got to go.