Comments on: County Budget, Bonding Decisions Loom

By: Andy LaBarre

Andy LaBarre — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 14:15:46 +0000

Vivienne,

I also want to thank you for rebutting Herb’s comments. He is welcome to his opinion but I think it’s just plain wrong to refer to any group of employees, in any sector, as “parasites.”

Regardless of how we end up funding our pension obligations, I believe they need to be funded because we need to keep our promise to those employees. We’ve closed the DB plan starting Jan. 1st 2014 so that we don’t incur future promises. Assuming future boards don’t re-open the DB plan, which I would highly recommend against doing.

If any Chronicle readers have thoughts they want to share with me please don’t hesitate to email me at andy.labarre@gmail.com; labarrea@ewashtenaw.org or call me at (734) 945-1298.

By: Barbara Carr

Barbara Carr — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:43:51 +0000

Thank you, Vivienne, for your usual informative and even-handed commentary. This is not a time for name calling and denigrating our public service employees.

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 29 May 2013 01:17:42 +0000

Herb, I was with you at the beginning but your attack on county retirees was unwarranted. These are ordinary wage earners who were promised a certain pension based in part on their own contributions. The BOC made some unwise choices (and I have criticized them) but that does not make the retirees “parasites”.

I have noticed a lot of bitterness and envy directed at public sector retirees because so many private sector pensions have been eliminated. There is a lot of inequity in our society today, much of it structural and some of it designed. (The 1% vs. the 99%, etc.) We can make better decisions about future courses if we can eliminate that envy and simply discuss what the consequences of those decisions will be instead of placing blame on those who are in a slightly better circumstance.

By: Herb

Herb — Wed, 29 May 2013 00:03:58 +0000

Generally large bond issues provide money for long lasting capital projects like schools, sewage treatment plants or bridges. These things provide value to the tax payers during the many years that it takes to repay the borrowing. This bonding is different. It provides absolutely nothing for the tax payers, just a huge serving of gravy for the county’s pension parasites. If it goes through, golf courses and expensive restaurants in Ft. Myers will rejoice but there will be nothing but grief and sorrow here.

By: M

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:08:30 +0000

While there was a vote on a public safety/jail millage in February 2005, I do not believe the public ever voted on the jail bonding proposal after enough signatures were collected. Instead, I recall that the Board decided not to pursue the bonds rather than put it to a vote.

By: Walter Cramer

Walter Cramer — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:24:46 +0000

Notice how this bonding & investment deal leverages our risk: if the economy does quite well over the next few decades, so will the bond-bought investment pool – but rising tax revenues will reduce our need for that. If the economy does poorly, then we’ll face both a big shortfall from the investments, and a grim lack of revenues to cover that shortfall.

In short, this deal makes sense like a fire insurance policy that DOES pay out if our house does NOT burn down, but does NOT pay out if our house DOES burn.

A sane strategy might be to ask insurance companies to bid on assuming ALL of the County’s unfunded pension & health obligations, in exchange for an up-front payment that we’d get by selling bonds. The insurance companies would have to estimate the eventual costs of those benefits, and execute long-term investment strategies – things that they are experts at, while our County government is not. And they’d take on the huge risks – which is their core business, but something that our Board should very eager to avoid.

Why is our government moving ahead with this? Welcome to Orange County, folks.

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:39:41 +0000

Regarding roads: although the BOC is discussing this issue, at present they have little to do with implementation. Transportation in Michigan is managed by a variety of agencies, none of them at present the BOC. Funding for transportation is a major subject at the state level. The Governor made some proposals, most of which appear unlikely to be implemented in the near term. Today's Crain's reported that there is a pending agreement to put $350 million more from the general fund into transportation, but it is acknowledged to be a very temporary patch. (The Governor proposed $1.1 billion more, from several new sources of revenue.) I've reviewed the state funding mechanisms and issues in this post [link] which has a couple of useful links. Note that there is a constitutional limitation on the amount of dedicated transportation funds that can be used for transit projects.

By: Fred Zimmerman

Fred Zimmerman — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:49:28 +0000

First and foremost: fix the roads.