By Mark Hill
Published Marin Independent-Journal, Oct. 20 THE BALLOT proposal by the Marin County Board of Supervisors to replace two key elected financial officials is the most brazen attempt yet by Marin's elected representatives to subvert taxpayers' interest in this county.
Measure B would merge the county auditor and treasurer-tax collector into a single finance chief's job appointed by and accountable only to the Board of Supervisors.
Representative democracy in this country has, for over 225 years, been built on the foundation of "by for and of the people" in order to protect citizens, and their tax dollars from an over-reaching, profligate and power-hungry government. Over the course of the last decade, the supervisors - all Democrats - have awarded pay packages, benefits and lifetime pensions to retiring municipal union members that in some cases total over $10 million per employee for that retiree's lifetime.
These pension benefits include lifetime salaries (70 percent to 100 percent of their final salary), full medical and dental (worth $750,000 alone) and cost-of-living increases for life. It far exceed anything available to workers in the private sector.
These egregious giveaways have saddled Marin with a conservative estimate of $1 billion in unfunded liabilities to date. That's tax dollars committed by our elected officials to the same Marin public employee unions that are their source of large campaign contributions.
These commitments will crowd out future spending for our children, our roads, our seniors, parks and health care and the environment.
The incredulous rationale from our supervisors is that by eliminating these two elected positions, we might save $100,000 a year.
We should be asking, what is the financial cost of losing the accountability that keeps our elected officials honest? The supervisors have recently recused themselves from membership on the county pension board, citing an appearance of "conflict of interest." The 250,000 residents in Marin County have been burdened with this onerous debt by our supervisors, with the complicity of 2,400 current and 3,000 retired public employees. These unilateral giveaways, "negotiated" and signed by our supervisors (all of them entitled to receiving county pension benefits) will eventually need to be paid through additional property taxes, sales taxes, service fees, user fees, higher parking fines, or whatever new scheme they come up with that will pick our pockets to preserve the status quo that provides for public employees first, and leaves taxpayers to pick up the tab. By eliminating elected financial positions and creating instead appointed "toadies," the supervisors are eliminating oversight and removing any accountability. This will allow the unions to continue to hold sway over county revenues to meet their own needs. More importantly, this move puts a padlock on the auditing and treasury functions which will further remove transparency as it relates to more giveaways.
The county already has gone out of its way not to be transparent when it comes to disclosing public employee salaries and benefits. The Marin IJ had to pressure county supervisors and fight a lawsuit filed by county managers in order to gain access to salaries paid to our public employees with taxpayer monies.
To think this was even necessary is as startling as it is telling. Our county taxpayers, residents and children deserve better and the Marin supervisors should be made to better explain why they support less transparency and less accountability by the removal of top managers elected to provide independent oversight.
This flawed plan, if successful, will surely keep our public employee union bosses happy with continued, unfettered, budget-busting giveaways by county supervisors, and ultimately put our county in even more financial peril.
Mark Hill of Tiburon is former chairman of the Marin Republican Party.
