What's Usually Talked About
v.
What's Most Important

Last update - 2/18/11

When most people realize how much debt trouble our County is in and that almost all of the debt was created by unfunded retiree benefits their very understandable first instinct is to talk about what County retiree benefits should be. The public debate then becomes ...

These are the ideological debates we're used to, and they are important. But there's two big problems:

• It ignores the most important cause of the debt and the thing that most needs to be fixed.
• It freezes politics into well-worn battle lines which obscures how much common ground really exists among the citizenry about the real issue - and prevents progress.

The debt didn't create itself - it didn't fall out of the sky. It isn't an Act of God.

Then what is the biggest cause of the debt about which most of us would agree across the political spectrum - and what most needs to be fixed?

It's extremely important to realize ...

The core of our County's retirement benefits could have been exactly what they were (with some important but not fundamental changes) and if their financing had been properly managed our County would not have the debt crisis we face today.

Now - proper management of retirement benefit financing wouldn't have been "free". There's no doubt significantly more money would have been set aside to fund those benefits. That would mean there would have been fewer County jobs and services (depending on how efficiently the County provides services). But we wouldn't have this debt - and we wouldn't have today's crisis.

YourPublicMoney.Com takes no position on what Mendocino County's retirement expenses should be. We absolutely believe:

• The County should report the true retirement expense cost and debt for each year, and not defer reporting the expense to future years.
• The County should properly finance those benefits each year, and don't force future generations to pay our expenses.

County officials spectacularly failed to do so.

We'll come back to this most basic level of our problems - but first we'll briefly explore various parts of our County's debt.