Budgeting, at least at the local and state level, where spending plans have to be balanced, is literally a zero-sum game. Yet it is inexplicably rare for a California journalist to note that political influence is driving compensation and regulatory decisions and to then link these decisions to this result: that there is less money available for the broader good or for the needy.

In Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, liberal pundit Steve Lopez offered strong proof that he had been mugged by reality and had figured out this dynamic. The topic: the city’s Department of Water and Power, which is every bit as out of control as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California with its employee-first priorities.

Lopez notes that Angelenos’ water and power …

“… rates wouldn’t be going up as much if DWP employees joined the rest of the world and contributed, out of pocket, toward their healthcare premiums. The new deal does not require that for current or future employees. They’ll pay more toward their retiree healthcare costs, and 2% of the savings generated from a delay in pay hikes will go toward healthcare.

“But there will be no reduction in an employee’s paycheck.

“With healthcare costs rising, he said, and private sector employees bearing more of the burden, it was all the more reason to bring public employees on board. And what better time to extract such a concession than the year in which IBEW spent a fortune backing Wendy Greuel for mayor, only to see her crushed by Eric Garcetti.

“With other city employees set to negotiate new contracts soon, what incentive is there for them to pay for healthcare now that DWP employees have been spared? None.”

Now, after that display of common sense, Lopez has what amounts to an epiphany: linking compensation decisions driven by political clout to headaches for the general public caused by inadequate government funding.

” … you can look for the mayor and council members to go hat in hand to the public next November with a bond measure to pay for street repairs, if not sidewalk repairs. This despite Garcetti saying during his campaign that he didn’t think we needed a sales tax increase.

“But we need a $3 billion bond, or bigger?   

“The ‘back to basics’ mayor, as Garcetti calls himself, apparently has no other way to pay for streets and sidewalks without that bond measure.

“Will you be inclined to vote yes while your water and power rates are going up in a city that doesn’t require DWP employees to contribute to healthcare premiums? A city in  which 70% of all employees pay nothing for healthcare premiums?”

For good measure, Lopez also refers to another stress factor on DWP rate payers: the city’s “increasingly expensive mandate on securing renewable energy,” environmental trendiness that may thrill Westside enviros but that does nothing for most L.A. residents but reduce the money they have to spend on their families.

The travails of San Jose, Stockton and other troubled cities in California have kept the spotlight off Los Angeles. But it is headed into decades of budget pain because of its generosity to unions. As I noted in a post earlier this year, more than one-third of the city’s budget goes to pay for retirees’ pension and health care — and that percentage is going up, not down.

At least with the election of Garcetti as mayor, L.A. voters have chosen someone who grasps this is a problem. Greuel, the loon Garcetti defeated, wanted to add 2,000 police and 800 firefighters to the payroll — a 20 percent increase even though L.A.s crime and fire problems are near historic lows. Why? To win the support of the police and fire unions.

But Greuel’s defeat will only buy L.A. a little extra time in staving off its decline. It’s not just the city’s permanent budget nightmare. L.A.’s private-sector economy is also in the middle of a broad, long-term decline that only occasionally gets the attention of its large daily newspaper.

By Chris Reed

The hegemony of Democrats in California is based to a striking degree on the ability of public employee unions — whose leaders and most affluent members are predominantly white — to keep minorities on board even though “social justice” means sharply different things to teachers union members and to most Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans.

This task is made easier by many Republicans, whose views on immigration and English-only policies and whose nostalgia about the way California used to be can easily be depicted as nativist fear of the other. Even as Democratic stewardship of the state’s economy has created the longest sustained unemployment in 70 years, the GOP’s horrible image has insulated Democrats from losing minority votes.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that at least some minority politicians are beginning to figure out that a party primarily devoted to preserving the jobs, automatic pay hikes and generous pensions of public employees is a party that’s not necessarily interested in what’s best for minorities.

African-American Councilwoman warns about union power

The latest is Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, an African-American progressive who pushes for green regulations and nanny-state causes but is also a budget hawk.

Perry lost last week’s mayoral primary after a campaign in which  she criticized the other two Democratic candidates — L.A. Councilman Eric Garcetti and L.A. Controller Wendy Greuel, who are both white — for their subservience to labor. Garcetti has tight ties with the SEIU; Greuel works closely with the police and fire unions.  In a weekend interview with the Los Angeles Times, Perry offered a distinctly Republican-sounding critique of the effects that raw union power and union-bankrolled candidates have on local government:

“Voters ‘need to examine what that will mean to them,’ Perry said. ‘They should look at where the money in this campaign comes from and think about if they want to have greater control of their public utility, for instance. Otherwise, if they don’t pay attention, they will be completely rolled over.

“‘Because that is what is at risk here, at great risk,’ she continued. Having someone too closely allied with employee unions in the mayor’s office could mean ‘the death of independent politics altogether. It could mean the only way you get elected in this town is if you get money from unions.'”

Poor schools for Latinos defined as civil-rights issue

Preceding Perry in realizing that union interests are often inimical to minorities’ interests was another Los Angeles Democrat, Gloria Romero, herself a former union member when she worked as a college professor.

As state senator, Romero  saw teachers unions sabotage reforms over and over again and fight relentlessly for policies that put veteran teachers at the safest, whitest schools and put the least experienced teachers at the poorest schools — often teachers who taught classes for which they didn’t even have the proper credentials. Romero lost so many battles — and saw so many Latino kids failed by L.A. Unified — that she ended up dropping a bomb, likening the fight to improve poor schools to a battle over civil rights.

For her candor, Romero was rewarded with a vicious California Teachers Association attack campaign that depicted her as “dangerous” and killed her 2010 bid to be superintendent of public instruction. The CTA’s choice, Tom Torlakson, has been just what the CTA wanted and just what reformers feared: a guardian of the status quo, right down to sticking up for school districts using 30-year borrowing on basic supplies and equipment so as to free up operating budget funds for teacher compensation.

Now Gov. Jerry Brown has essentially put all Latino elected officials in the Legislature and on local school boards on the spot by proposing a dramatic change in school funding policies to give more money to schools with most students with lagging language skills.

Brown says it is crucial to the future of California that these students, often Latinos, graduate high school with solid job skills.

Gov. Brown to Latino lawmakers: Whose side are you on?

This is not going to be an issue that Assembly Speaker John Perez — heretofore a CTA and CFT bosom buddy — necessarily can finesse. If the teacher unions try to kill Brown’s plan so as to maintain a funding status quo designed to create the most comfort for veteran teachers, Perez will have to take a stand.

Does he care most about keeping the teacher unions happy? Or about the hundreds of thousands of Latino schoolkids whom Brown hopes to help?

We shall see. But here’s hoping that not just Romero, but the state media in general, frames this issue as it should be framed: Just what do elected California Democrats define as “social justice”?

Helping teacher unions?

Or helping disadvantaged Latino students?

This could be the defining moment that California politics has badly needed since public employee union power metastasized after Gov. Pete Wilson left office in 1999.

By Chris Reed

Despite some pension reforms and program cuts, the city of Los Angeles remains in difficult financial shape. A Jan. 24 Fitch credit-rating service analysis says the L.A. economy is rebounding, but that city leaders struggle to find the political will to deal with structural budget problems, and that huge annual deficits will cause headaches for many years to come.

What is a key culprit in L.A.’s financial woes? You guessed it. Fitch says that of the city’s $3.9 billion 2011 general fund budget, nearly 20 percent ($773.5 million) went to fund retirement health care and other post-employment benefits and that nearly 15 percent ($577.4 million) went to city employee and public safety pension funds.

So what are the three key candidates in the March 5 mayor’s race saying they’ll do to deal with the budget and the daunting fact that more than one-third of the city general budget goes to fund public employee retirement benefits?

As this L.A. Times story makes clear, all want to basically duck the topic. Still, at least one candidate, City Councilwoman Jan Perry, knows tough times are ahead, with bankruptcy a possibility.

Wooing cops, firefighters and the SEIU

But two candidates want to make the problem even worse. Candidate Wendy Greuel wants to add 2,000 police and 800 firefighters — a 20 percent increase in a city where crime and fire problems are near modern historic lows. As the city controller, one would think Greuel should know better.

Meanwhile, City Councilman Eric Garcetti, the third major candidate, is in a fight with Greuel to see whom can do the most pandering to the Service Employees International Union, according to a Feb. 5 L.A. Times report:

“[Greuel and Garcetti] offered strong commitments of solidarity with the union representing a major chunk of civilian employees at City Hall, according to recordings of the [candidate interview] sessions obtained by The Times.

“The pledges [were] made last week in a members-only meeting for union workers considering a possible endorsement …

“Greuel … accused city leaders of failing to follow collective bargaining procedures when cutting retirement benefits for future city employees — a complaint being voiced loudly by the SEIU. …

“When it was his turn, Garcetti repeated a pledge to make all of the city’s department heads reapply for their jobs — offering a commitment that city workers would play a role in deciding which managers will remain. …

“The remarks show how much Greuel and Garcetti covet the backing of a union that represents thousands of janitors, trash truck drivers and other blue-collar city workers. If SEIU weighs in on the contest to replace Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, it could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars and scores of volunteers for a favored candidate.”

Unfortunately for L.A., Greuel is considered the clear favorite, not the far more clear-eyed Perry.

Having lived in Southern California since 1990 and watched the city of Los Angeles go downhill under labor-friendly mayors (Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn) and do well under pro-business moderates of both parties (Richard Riordan and Tom Bradley), I’ve wondered when Angelenos would become as pragmatic as New Yorkers.

The same dynamic of mayoral success holds in the Big Apple — pro-business centrists like Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani have a way better record than labor-friendly liberals like David Dinkins and Abe Beame. And in New York, the heavily Democratic electorate figured this out long ago. When was the last time New York City voters elected a Democrat to be mayor?

All the way back in 1990.