Conventionally, Ronald Reagan is characterized as conservative, but as governor in 1968, he signed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act that endowed police and other local public employees with the power to bargain collectively with the governments that employed them, thereby handing political power to employees who were the principal beneficiaries of government spending. Conventionally, Jerry Brown is characterized as liberal, but as governor in 1976, he signed the Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act that converted most sentences to mandatory-minimum periods specified by the state legislature, leading to an explosion of the state’s prison population. Today’s exaggerated convention is that California suffers from exploding employee costs because of domination by a single party. Not true. Both parties enabled and capitulated to public sector unions seeking ever-higher compensation and benefits.
President Franklin Roosevelt, who championed the 1935 National Labor Relations Act that conferred collective bargaining rights on private sector employees, opposed collective bargaining for public sector employees. But in 1968, when local government workforces in CA were overwhelmingly GOP, Reagan saw an opportunity to boost GOP fortunes. In 1975 Brown followed suit by signing the Rodda Act granting collective bargaining rights to school district employees. As a result of the two bills, local government and school employees started determining the local councils and school boards that determined employee compensation and benefits. As they were driving up local government and school costs, inflation was driving up the property taxes that paid for those costs. Taxpayers revolted in 1978 by passing Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and led to deficits for local governments and schools. So, in 1979 Brown signed AB 8, which reallocated property taxes, took over county funding of many health and welfare programs, and boosted state aid to schools, effectively centralizing power in Sacramento. When combined with the Dills Act, which Brown had signed in 1977 extending collective bargaining rights to state employees, the final stage was set. State employees pushed through an explosion of prison building and compensation increases, including a retroactive pension increase in 1999 that passed with overwhelming support from both parties.
As FDR anticipated, the result has been terrible for residents and taxpayers: Public employees who are the principal recipients of public spending constantly seek higher taxes to fund higher compensation and benefits without regard to quality of services. While the quality of most consumer services has improved at stable or lower prices, the services provided by California governments and schools show no improvement despite rising prices. That’s in part because an increasing share of spending is being diverted to retirement costs, which more than doubled as a percentage of the state General Fund over the last decade. Both parties have long been obstacles to retirement reform because both fear retribution from public sector unions.
Behind every tax increase are public employee unions who reap the lion’s share of new revenue without improving services. The antidotes are to repeal collective bargaining rights for public employees and/or to offset their power with persistent support of lawmakers who serve the general interest, not to whine about one-party dominance.
