County kicks can down road again

On Tuesday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors signed off on the $6.88 billion budget for the coming fiscal year with amendments.

The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Jeff Hewitt the lone dissenter.

“There’s not even a token sign here of one of our largest priorities,” Hewitt said. “We need to address this pension crisis a lot more than we’re doing now.”

He’s right.

Earlier this year, the county’s Pension Advisory Review Committee reported the county’s unfunded pension obligations stood at $3.6 billion.

Rising pension costs, indeed county labor costs overall, continue to crowd out spending on services, force contract rate increases and put long-term budgetary pressure.

In May, this newspaper noted that the “employer contribution rate for the nonpublic safety pension plan will be at 30% by mid-2023, meaning that for three nonpublic safety employees earning $100,000 each, pension payments are equal to an employee earning $90,000 a year.”

County taxpayers need to ask themselves if they really want to support county officials who preside over such a poor allocation of public funds.

Of course, the reason the Board of Supervisors in Riverside County has found itself in this position, and why it continues to avoid further efforts to contain pension costs, is that most members of the board put public-sector union interests ahead of taxpayer interests.

This newspaper reported in May that the “county expects to spend close to $3 billion in the next budget on employee salaries and benefits, up 22% from fiscal 2018-19.”

Meanwhile, the board recently approved contract rate increases on cities contracting with the Riverside Sheriff’s Department, due to the board’s tendency to bend over backward to approve lucrative contracts for the unions representing the department.

None of this is surprising. Politicians want to be liked. They especially want to stay in office. And it’s a lot easier to dole out cash than it is to call and work for reform.

But the toll, ultimately, falls on county residents who see diminished services than they might otherwise have and the threat of ever-increasing taxation.