New union contracts approved, but City still $100M in the hole

It was a busy day at City Council. Via the LA Times comes word that the Council approved three separate agreements with various City employee unions representing police officers, civilian workers, and DWP workers.

The Council approved a deal with a coalition of civilian employee unions:

The council unanimously approved a reworked contract with the Coalition of L.A. City Unions, which represents 22,000 civilian employees. Coalition members agreed to increase the size of their contribution to the retirement fund and, for the remainder of the fiscal year, cut their pay by 3.5 hours in each 80-hour pay period.

In exchange, 2,400 employees will be eligible to leave up to five years early with full benefits. Early retirement will reduce expenses by $47.2 million between now and June 30, [Miguel] Santana said.

Why is the City paying people to retire? Newsflash: If you want to retire go ahead and retire all ready. Go. And here I though you could only get a golden parachute in the private sector.

Council also approved a deal with the police unions:

The council also voted 12-1, with Councilman Bernard Parks opposed, on the contract with the Police Protective League, which represents nearly 10,000 officers. That agreement reduces by 20% the salaries provided to newly recruited officers and will require officers to convert unused sick time into additional days off – a move designed to save $10 million.

The cornerstone, however, is a reduction in overtime costs, which are slated to drop by $45 million between now and June 30. By reworking the way in which overtime is compensated, officers will be able to accrue up to 399 hours of overtime – one and a half times the regular salary -- that can be paid out in future years.

Looks like the police agreement is nothing but a shell game. For all the "reworking" the agreement promised it really just pushed the overtime costs out to future years. The agreement shouldn't have changed the way overtime is compensated, it should have changed the way police offices are asked to do their jobs in order to prevent officers from having to do overtime it the first place. The LAPD needs to either find increased efficiencies or look at reducing services.

Finally, the Council also approved an agreement with DWP members:

Even as police officers go without raises in each of the next two years, the Los Angeles City Council moved ahead with a plan today to give employees of the Department of Water and Power raises ranging from 2% to 4% in each of the next five years.

Three hours after it approved a two-year contract with the Police Protective League that offers zero pay increases, the council forwarded a package of five raises to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's cuts for police officers and civilian workers but raises for DWP workers. DWP salaries are, of course, paid by DWP rate payers and not the City's General Fund but when DWP workers are getting a raise and other City workers are getting cuts and/or laid off it's going to be a killer for employee moral (and productivity). 

So, with all those agreements and you'd think the problem is solved, right? Nope. The City is still $100M in the hole:

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said he will present a new round of budget-cutting proposals in December or January, once the city knows how many workers have agreed to retire. But he argued that today's votes represent progress.

“One hundred million sounds like a lot, but when it started out at $400 million, it’s much more tangible,” he said.

Still $100M in the hole half way through the fiscal year. Ridiculous. Worse part about it is that much of the givebacks the police and civilian union members have agreed to are just temporary. Their payments, raises, and bonuses are just being deferred until future years. Sweet. These agreements will just make the City's long-term fiscal problem, which is already looking bad, even worse.