Policing, Pay and Retirement...

Soooooo…..a very reliable source of mine tells me that an instructor in a general education course at a local academic institution has been baggin’ on me by name in his class recently. He has apparently told his students that “former Police Chief Mike Maloney” has been raping/screwing the California taxpayer with his (my) retirement. He then goes on to criticize me for retiring from PERS, and then taking a job in education with STRS from which I will also eventually retire. He chuckles as he notes to the class what a hard time he has getting people like me to return his calls and e-mails, and then he brags about the great story he has coming out where he will discuss and expose these issues in great depth. And then, catch this, he turns right around and tells the class that he works for the two local colleges so he can access the same “government” type retirement that I have or will be getting because it is such a good retirement. It turns out that this particular instructor is also a regular contributor to a local weekly newspaper that has previously established a clear record of hating the Chico Police Officer’s Association and bagging on former Chief Kirk Trostle and I for taking, what they call, “early retirement.” Coincidentally, this very same weekly paper called my current employer, Butte College, last week to make a public records request for my current salary amount and information about what retirement system I am in with them. Of course, I am very aware that this is public information. It also happens that this is the same guy who sent me two e-mails during the last week asking to meet and interview me regarding my recent involvement with a PAC during the last election and an e-mail sent by the Police Department’s recent Interim Chief to the Chico City Council regarding the condition of the Police Department – two subjects that have nothing to do with my current salary and retirement system and nothing to do with “raping the taxpayers” with my previous retirement from 32 years in law enforcement, 31 of which were in PERS.

Hmmmmmm……gee…..do you think this guy might have an ulterior motive? I do! Do you think he is being sneaky or disingenuous about why he really wants to interview me? I do…..and that is why I won’t meet with him. I have previously seen the results of what the CN&R proudly calls this guy’s “investigative reporting,” and in my estimation it was not investigative at all! Rather, it appears to me that what this guy does is he decides what his (usually controversial) conclusion will be first, and then he very carefully and in the most biased way structures bits and pieces of partially factual information together to support his predetermined conclusion.

Not having any idea what this guy has up his sleeve, but anticipating that in some way he is “investigating” my work history and circumstances, as well as my post-retirement employment and community involvement, I thought that I would share my own thoughts and story before this guy starts spewing his slanted spin.

Here it is:

I continue to note over and over again that the liberal left (I detest referring to them as “progressive”) and the haters of public safety and their pay and benefit packages have no room in their positions, messages or public communications for the following:

1.              Truth

2.              Honesty

3.              Context

4.              Facts

5.              The rest of the story

6.              The big picture

7.              Accuracy

8.              Complete information

Rather, when these things don’t fit their story line, their default is to lie overtly, make stuff up, or just omit the truth. As such, and in relation to the ongoing banter being perpetuated by the cop, Chico Police Officer’s Association, PERS-hating and retired-CPD-chief-hating editorial staff of the Chico News and Review and their “investigative reporter(s),” I will take the liberty of addressing a few of the above categories of misinformation as they relate to public saefty salaries and retirements in general…and as they relate to me personally.

I recall that by the time I was 4 or 5 years old I wanted nothing more than to be a police officer. My dad was a motor cop for the CHP, and a highlight of my day was waiting out side and watching him ride his motorcycle down the street toward home. On a couple of occasions, us kids even got short rides. By the time I was in second grade, my teacher wrote in the comments on my report card: “Even now it is evident that Michael wants to be a policeman like his dad when he grows up.” By the time I was in third grade, after my dad told me that a police officer’s most important tool was a notebook and a pencil, I carried my own notebook and pencil everywhere. By the time I was in seventh or eighth grade, I had occasion to be a pertinent witness in a significant arson and insurance fraud investigation. I wanted to be a police explorer, but a back surgery and confinement in bed in a body cast for nearly a year derailed that plan. By the time I was done with high school, I was aware of two young men in the area I lived who had gone to the police academy and become police officers at age 18. I vowed to do the same.

My parents weren’t real keen on the idea of me becoming a cop, and especially at such a young age. By the time I graduated from high school, I had availed myself of a Federal job-training program called CETA. Two weeks after graduation, I was a uniformed police trainee at the Willows Police Department, and two months after that I was attending the police academy. When I graduated from the academy, I was placed into a field-training program, and within a few months I was working as a solo police officer. I made $666 a month, and was thrilled to be making that much money.

By the end of my first year on the job, the CETA Program ended (thank you Ronald Reagan) and I moved over to the Glenn County Sheriff’s Department, where I would spend the next four years working as a deputy. Soon realizing that it was not terribly desirable to be a police officer in the small town where you went to high school, I began to look for employment out of the area. I applied to several Bay Area agencies, but was not successful for a variety of reasons. Eventually, I applied at the Chico Police Department. The first time I put in an application I was not even invited to take the test or participate in the process because a high number of white males applied, and they only allowed 40 to take the test each time. I applied again the next year, and after a hiring process that took another full year, I was hired.

As a CETA employee at Willows PD, I was happy to be making the $666 a month. I made a bit more at the Sheriff’s Department, and just a bit more than that at Chico. I remember the early 1980s when I took home $1000 a month for the first time, and I was on top of the world – doing a job I loved, and making great money at the same time.

Somewhere along the line, I learned something really cool about these jobs: it seems that between the employer and the employee, each sets a bit of money aside every month for the day decades later when I would retire. As an 18-23 year old, between starting my career, and moving departments a couple times, I could not even fathom the idea of retirement. I would hear older officers speak of something called “PERS” and something about “2% at 50,” but because I did not know what it was or understand what they were talking about, I would quietly excuse myself from those conversations. Frankly, this continued until I was in my early 40s with over 20 years on the job.

Until the last 3-5 years of my career, I could not recall a time where I found myself thinking about retiring. Rather, all throughout my career, I recall thinking of such things as becoming a training officer, then earning my AA degree, then becoming a traffic officer, becoming a detective, earning my BA degree, becoming a sergeant, becoming a lieutenant, beginning work on my master’s degree, getting promoted to captain, and then setting my eyes on the top job as the Chief of Police. By the way, of all of the hundreds of police officers I had known in my career, I had only ever met one other who started at the very bottom of a department, and over a full career worked himself or herself through every rank to the very top. It’s just not something that commonly happens. In fact, I came to observe that it was not all that common for anyone to actually serve a full 30 years on the job and retire with a full retirement benefit.

So why do I even mention any of this? Well, the truth is that I am just like many or most who go into policing. When we signed on, we did not sign on for the money or for the retirement. We signed on because we were passionate about wanting to the job, and the department(s) we selected had something to offer – some more than others. In fact, to be very clear, I can’t recall any point or period of time where I recall thinking, “How can I take my interest and desire to work in law enforcement, and use it to hold taxpayers or elected officials hostage so I can get as much money out of them as I possibly can as the CN&R Editor seems to believe. Additionally, even when I was a Board Member, then eventually the President of CPOA, I don’t recall ever having pounded on a drum demanding more wages.

One of the other things I came to learn about this job, as well as from my friends who are firefighters, is that sometimes, after you have worked all of the scheduled hours they make you stay at work….whether you want to be there or not. I have a relative who is a firefighter, who is on his 32^nd day without going home as I write this. I have other former co-workers who were on their days off yesterday (after having worked their 40 hours for the week) and they all received phone calls telling them to come back to work for a big emergency. Now, here was the really cool thing I learned as a young officer: when they make you stay, or they make you come back from being on days off, they will actually pay you. The law requires in these cases that they pay you overtime (1.5 times your normal rate of pay), so they do. Sometimes they know that other people are going to be away from their shifts because they are sick, they are taking their earned vacation, they are going away for required training, or they are taking time off to take care of a sick relative. In those cases, they select from other employees who have already worked their 40 hours and ask them to work extra to cover what would have otherwise been a vacant shift. Again, when folks do this they are paid….overtime. Some people like to work lots of overtime, so they do.

Here’s the really interesting thing about overtime: in the 35+ years I have worked in the business, I have yet to run into a co-worker or colleague who is of the perspective that when they are working overtime they are consciously fleecing the taxpayer who pays their salary. In truth, overtime in public safety (absent a very significant depth of staffing) is the difference between people being there to answer the call and people not being there – that is, if you don’t fill the vacant shifts, there is nobody to work! For those who live in an 8-5, Monday through Friday world (like newspaper editors), this concept is hard to understand. In Chico, there are some police officers, for example, who get their 40 hour shift done on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night during the 12-13 hours of darkness. This means that their time off will be Monday-Friday during the day, and they may be available to be ordered in to help meet other requirements of the police department. When they work these extra hours, most often not by their choice, they have to be paid. Again, the law says they need to get overtime. Here’s another truth: most often, there are so many shifts, assignments and special details to be filled that they simply don’t get filled.

One more important point about overtime: All of those firefighters who are on the front lines of California’s wildfires right now and who have been away from home for weeks and weeks on end are all being paid….. lots of that pay is overtime! Nobody cares right now, but I have predicted before and will now say it again; the haters are going to be bagging on them in January or February when the local daily publishes their annual salaries again, and the public sees how much they really make when they work all those hours. Their work of the last few weeks will be forgotten. I have come to believe that the public and the haters don’t really care how many hours those in public safety work. They don’t even care that they get paid overtime. The thing that they just can’t get over though, is the isolated (no context) thought of a government employee who, for any reason, makes over $100,000….which is what many of the firefighters will make this year.

What continues to blow my mind, and frankly anger me, is that that those who appear not to like police and fire seem to just make up the story about pay and overtime, rather than seek to be educated about the truth. I see some who are given lots of print time in the local media who like to talk about how the jacked up overtime contributes to final salary for retirement of public employees, and that the employees will intentionally “spike” their retirement so they can make more when they are done. Nothing could be further from the truth! Overtime DOES NOT count toward retirement….EVER!!! PERS retirements in California are based upon the base salary of the particular public employee. The lefties and haters won’t ever report this though, because it does not fit with their contrived BS message and dilutes their biased messages.

Speaking of making things up, and the contrived message, here’s a couple tidbits about how the retirement system works. In the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), which hundreds of local governments throughout the State participate in, the employer (city, county, state, etc.) pays an amount of money toward future retirement for each employee and each employee pays an amount toward their retirement. In many cases, governments historically, through the collective bargaining process, have elected to pay the employee portion of retirement in lieu of otherwise giving a raise (because it cost them less to do so overall) – Chico did this several times over the years. The result for the employee was that their base pay (on which their retirement is based) would remain the same, but their monthly take home pay would increase. This occurred to such a degree throughout the state that many government employees ended up with their entire contribution paid for by their government employer. By the way, when this happens it is not because the officers held their city council or board of supervisors hostage. Rather, it happened because the persons elected by the citizenry to those bodies voted to allow it to happen – yes, the elected officials approved it – long before it became public and long before it was ever realized on a public safety employee pay check.

When it comes time for a retired employee to collect their retirement benefit, the formula for their monthly pension pay is based upon three things: 1) What is the highest base salary the employee ever made (not counting overtime)? 2) How many years does the person have in the PERS system (NOT how many years the person has been in the profession)? 3) What retirement formula does the employee’s work group have? As an example, lets say that a police officer has 25 years on the job, her highest base salary was $75,000 annually, and her formula as a public safety was 3% at 50. This means, the soonest the employee could retire and collect any pension is age 50, based on the 3%, she would earn 3% of her highest salary for each year of service (3%/year x 25 years = 75%). Doing the math, this officer would earn 75% of $75,000 for the rest of her life, or $56,250 of taxable income. The more money you make, and the more years you have, the more you will make in retirement. If you are a public safety employee, they most you can make is 90% of your salary if you have worked a full 30 years. To be very clear, the only way a 50 year old can retire from public safety in California and collect a 90% pension is if they worked 30 years …. In PERS! One additional benefit that elected official sometimes give employee groups through the collective bargaining process is called EPMC (Employer Paid Member Contribution). Under this benefit, the elected officials approve the employing entity reporting that portion of employee share of retirement that they pay as “special income” to PERS, which means a maximum retirement benefit can go up to 97-98%. This can only happen though if the elected body in charge of the government entity approves it, and consents to giving it to their employees – like happened in Chico (and many other California counties and municipalities).

There is a lot more too it, including a number of nuances that help to paint a complete picture, but the lefties and the haters don’t typically like that complete information thing. Instead, they like to bag on guys like me who probably make up less than .5% of PERS employees. Why am I a less than 1%er…..an anomaly? Well: 1) Very few people begin making their PERS contributions at age 19 like I did. The result being that by the time I was age 50, I had maxed out in the PERS system with 31 years. 2) Very few start at the very bottom of an agency, and over their 30 years work their way up to the very top, highest paid position which receives the highest salary and which salary is the basis for calculating the retirement benefit. In truth, most public safety retirees from PERS are like the 25 year $75,000 example I gave above.

There are many in our community who want the average, uniformed citizen to believe that all Chico Police officers are screwing the taxpayers with their exorbitant pay and benefit packages. Nothing could be further from the truth. Among those most vocal about this are at least one ignorant Chico City Council member (more about him in future episodes!), a variety of gadflies who hover at City Council meetings and the CN&R editorial staff. The truth is that the market for police officers in California is the entire State. In fact, currently the Chico PD employs individuals who have come to the Department from Crescent City to San Diego, and everywhere in between as the Department sought to avail itself of the very best from that market. In order to be competitive in this statewide market to attract and hire the highest quality employees, a competitive wage and benefit package must be paid….and it must be maintained. For many years, the City elected leadership made a commitment to paying competitive wages and benefits. They provided packages that were consistent with the best departments in the State. As a result, the Department was able to attract the best employees….and it was because of the high  quality of the employees, that, when there were not enough of them to keep up with the activity of the rapidly growing City, they were able to keep their heads above water. Then, the economic downturn hit. Officers were laid off, then restored. Other positions were eliminated, and over time, nearly 30% of the Department’s sworn strength was lost through attrition and a failure to approve rehiring to even the reduced staffing levels. At the same time, in response to the unprecedented number of vacancies, the Department reduced or eliminated staffing in key areas and special assignments, and struggled just to keep up with emergency calls for service. Over a concurrent 2-3 year period, officers took pay cuts that resulted in up to 20% reductions in previous base pay levels. Overtime became mandatory for basic shift coverage, vacations and other time off was cancelled, and ignorant current and former City Council members led the charge in baggin’ on the Department because they simply could not keep up with the service demands. Crime began to rise, and the quality of life throughout the City diminished noticeably. And throughout all of this, certain current and former members of the Council and members of the local liberal media actively assigned blame for it all on the members of the Chico Police Officer’s Association, most of whom, in truth, are guys and gals just like I described myself previously.

It just chaps my ass when Chico’s cops are made to be the bad guys for what the City’s top appointed and elected leadership made happen. It was mismanagement and incompetence, not the paying of competitive wages to get quality employees that brought us to the brink of disaster as a city. Even though a reduction in those wages and benefits helped to save the City, it came at a significant cost. The most experience employees bailed – some could see the writing on the wall, and bailed sooner than others. There were changes in what the City had to offer replacement employees, and the City was no longer the attractive place to work that it once was. Salaries and benefits were reduced, and frankly, at least for a period of time, that was reflected in the quality of applicants the City was able to attract for various positions. Fortunately, it now looks like the City is on its way out of the hole….but please be very clear: this was not a hole caused by the employees, by the unions or by public safety specifically. Everything that happened is the result of decisions, action and/or omissions of top appointed and elected leadership of the City.

A former Council candidate naively suggested a few years back that Chico could hire a whole mess of cops if we reduced the wage to $12 an hour. You know what you get for $12 an hour? You get $12 an hour cops. As the mayor once made very clear, “If you want to pay for amateurs, you’re gonna get amateurs,” and he noted, “we have been there before.” I would suggest that as a community, we don’t even want to go there with the police. We need to make a commitment to remaining competitive in the statewide market, and paying a wage and benefit and offering opportunities that will allow us to do so. We also need our leaders to show that they have the nads to take responsibility for making the decision to keep Chico competitive in the market for quality cops, and they need to be openly accountable for their decisions when they do so.

Who knows what the big investigative reporter has coming down the pike, or what or whom it is about….but I feel better getting some of these things off my chest!!