At last week’s meeting, the Anaheim City Council spent a considerable amount of time and effort arguing over a $40,000 item — what Mayor Tom Tait wanted was the restoration of his staff budget to $100,000 from $60,000 presumably to pay his aid Mishal Montgomery more money for part-time work.
Tait held up slides of other cities thoughout California with what the staff levels and mayoral budgets were, but failed to mention these cities have a “strong mayor” model and are not professionally managed like Anaheim is. He would have been better off using nearby Santa Ana as a model since that city is almost identical in size to Anaheim and has a city manager form of government with the Mayor holding some ceremonial responsibilities.
Montgomery’s qunadary is to take home a larger paycheck or contribute money to her pension. Tait himself identified pension reform as a major issue the city must deal with and with the exception of Montgomery, Tait is no friend of Anaheim City employees and their unions.
From Tait’s 2015 State of the City Address: “This (pension reform) is an issue in almost every larger city in America and Anaheim is certainly not immune. Here in Anaheim, we have a public pension hole of more than $500 million dollars. To put this in perspective, our annual general fund budget is about half that.
This matters for two significant reasons.
First, money that goes into higher pension contributions is money we don’t have to serve our citizens. It’s the crowding out effect – crowding out our ability to build parks, roads, public safety and create a thriving business environment.
Second, retirement benefits are guaranteed. If there’s not enough money then there’s ultimately only two ways to get it – raise taxes or cut services. This is the reality.
You may not know this – I didn’t before I became Mayor. But the state of California doesn’t allow local governments to change the accrual formulas – even on a going-forward basis. I’ve been actively advocating for these changes and will continue to do so in order to protect our employees’ retirement and make the pensions sustainable. In the meantime, we need to do everything we can do to establish the lowest possible pension rates that the state currently allows for new hires.”
Except have his aide take a lower pension for part-time work.
When it comes to the city’s public employee unions, Tait’s votes tell the tale. He voted against restoring the 10 percent voluntary reduction that the city’s lowest paid full-time employees took in 2011. This voluntary cut taken by workers let the city cut their deficit in half and prevented layoffs. Each one of these employees makes less than Mishal Montgomery for full time work across all departments in the city.
Tait also voted against the police and fire contracts because he felt the pension formulas were still to high and contributions at 12 percent were too low. Yet when it comes to his personal aide, the rest of the council was “cruel.” Montgomery is seeking to keep her pension at 2.7 at 55 with a 1percent contribution, but wants more money to take home every payday.
Given his pressure on public employees in regards to their pensions, Tait’s actions for his friend and employee are pretty hypocritical. But if Tait really feels Montgomery is underpaid, he has some options:
1. He can pay her from leftover campaign funds. It’s not illegal or unethical. But Tait would prefer to do this with other people’s money — mainly the taxpayers.
2. He could have the Tait family trust write her checks to supplement her earnings while Montgomery maximizes her pension.
3. Tait could offer Montgomery a job with his family business at any salary he wants.
4. Tait could launch a “GoFundMe” page and encourage people in Anaheim to contribute to Montgomery’s paycheck. I’m sure every member of CATER will make a generous contribution.