California Pension Reform Should Include the Police

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If you paid attention to the 2014 San Jose Mayoral election, one would have thought the city was a warzone. Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese - along with his police union allies - turned San Jose's shrinking police force into a central issue in the campaign, connecting the reduction to the voter passed Measure B pension reform championed by outgoing Mayor Chuck Reed. It was no coincidence that Cortese's opponent, City Councilman Sam Liccardo, was an ally of Reed's and supportive of the pension reform. The tactic failed and Liccardo won, paving the way for further implementation of the 2012 reform.

As of May 2013, California had a total of 68,340 police and sheriff officers employed statewide, earning an annual mean wage of just over $86,000 (compared to $61,400 median household income). Both the number of officers and their salary are important as cities across the state begin to face constrained budgets caused by growing pension obligations. For instance, between 2003 and 2013, the City of Los Angeles' pension obligations ballooned from 3% of total expenditures to 18%. The city, in fiscal year 2012-2013, had to contribute $482 million (36% of payroll and 37% of the city's total pension contribution) toward the public safety pension system. However, when cities begin exploring pension reform, public safety unions engage in a well-versed public relations campaign to exempt themselves. Their argument is that including public safety in any reform would make it more difficult to attract officers and sheriffs, thus resulting in a crime wave.

Using the 2010 to 2013 FBI's "Crime in the United States" statistics, I've examined crime rates (per 100,000 residents), rates percent changes, and police officer employment (also per 100,000 residents) for California and its largest 20 cities as of 2013 (excluding Santa Clarita, for which the FBI didn't have police data) to determine whether this argument is indeed accurate. Among the top 20 cities, four have recently tackled pension reform or have been particularly hampered by pension challenges (San Diego, San Jose, Stockton, and San Bernardino). To determine whether the public safety claims have weight, we need to a) see if the "pension challenged" cities have had greater police departures than the other cities and then, b) examine whether their crime levels have differed significantly.

In 2013, the pension challenged cities had 124 police per 100,000 residents, down 8.8% from 2010. The remaining cities, however, had 188 police per 100,000 residents, a reduction of 5.5%. It is clear, then, that the cities that either implemented aggressive pension reforms or are currently facing serious pension-related fiscal troubles have, relative to the other top California cities, experienced more police officer reductions.

Between 2010 and 2013, the pension challenged cities saw a 5.5% decrease in violent crime and a 1.8% increase in property crime. Compared to the other cities, the pension challenged ones unperformed on violent crime by 5.1 points, but over-performed on property crime by 4.1 points. Hence, the overall violent and property crime grew by just 0.7% between 2010 and 2013 in the pension challenged cities, almost 5 times slower than the other cities. As such, even though populations grew roughly at the same pace and despite the pension challenged cities seeing a greater drop in its police officers, these cities didn't perform exceptionally worse than the other largest cities in California with regard to crime rate changes.

Even if we look at the crime rates and not the percent changes, it would appear that the pension challenged cities are no worse off than the others. In 2013, there were 3,355 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents in the pension challenged cities. In the others, there were 3,663 per 100,000 - or about 8% more. Indeed, across the time period, the other cities had at least 5% more total violent and property crimes per 100,000, even while also having at least 32% more police officers (this holds true even if you break the violent and property crime numbers apart).

None of this is to suggest that police officers in some cities are not doing their job, or to demean their very important (and in many cases, dangerous) profession. In many cases, the issue of crime and the number of police is confounding as more crime-ridden locations will likely seek out more police officers. But this representation certainly blows a hole into the notion that if public safety officers are included in pension reform then 1) police forces will be decimated and 2) crime will consequently skyrocket. Even in San Bernardino, which has declared bankruptcy and seen a 28% reduction in its police force, violent and property crimes per 100,000 have dropped by 0.5% between 2010 and 2013.

Pension reform is a challenge, but it is only that way because elected officials have been captured by public employee special interests and failed to be responsible fiscal stewards. The longer cities delay action, the more that taxpayers, retirees, and current and future employees will suffer.

 

Carson Bruno is the assistant dean for admission and program relations at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Follow him on Twitter @CarsonJFBruno.

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