Tales of excessive public sector pay and benefits have become so commonplace in California that it's difficult to be shocked anymore. But if there's any story that can shake the numbness, it'd be this one, from the Orange County Register's Brian Calle:
[In] the California coastal city of Hermosa Beach ... some community service staffers who collect money from parking meters and manage their operations - positions once widely known as "meter maids" - are making nearly $100,000 a year in total compensation, according to city documents.
Calle continues:
This author will let the reader decide whether the former venture capitalist or the spokesperson for a state where taxpayers finance meter maids at master's degree levels is the more credible fiscal authority.
There are 10 parking enforcement employees for the 1.3-square-mile beach city southwest of downtown Los Angeles, and they pull down some disproportionate compensation, considering their job functions. In fact, the two highest-earning employees for fiscal year 2011-12 are estimated to have made more than $92,000 and $93,000, respectively, according to city documents provided by Patrick "Kit" Bobko, one of five council members and who also serves as mayor pro tem.
...
Bobko also wrote in a memo that the retirement costs for these 10 employees "from [fiscal year 2011-12] through their retirement age at 62 was nearly $1.6 million, and the medical costs for these employees from this fiscal year to their retirement at age 62 would be $1,353,827." Excluding salaries, the [retirement] contributions and medical costs for the 10 employees performing parking enforcement will cost, on average, nearly $300,000 apiece."This piece is an instructive contrast with the story published today in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which a spokesperson for Governor Jerry Brown waves away Mitt Romney's criticisms of California's self-inflicted economic wounds as a "paper-thin Republican talking point."
This author will let the reader decide whether the former venture capitalist or the spokesperson for a state where taxpayers finance meter maids at master's degree levels is the more credible fiscal authority.
