"The city is chin-deep in California's trickle-down misery, and last week Richard Riordan, who was L.A. mayor from 1993 to 2001, coauthored with Alexander Rubalcava—an investment adviser—a Wall Street Journal column declaring the city's fiscal crisis "terminal." They say Villaraigosa should "face the fact" that "between now and 2014 the city will likely declare bankruptcy." Villaraigosa says that will not happen. But look what has happened.
Nationwide, government employees are most of what remains of "defined benefit" America. More than 80 percent of government workers have defined benefits—as opposed to defined-contribution—pension plans. Only about 20 percent of private-sector workers have defined-benefit plans. California's parlous condition owes much to burdensome health-care and pension promises negotiated with public employees' unions, promises that are suffocating the state's economic growth.
The nightmare numbers include the state's unemployment rate (12.6 percent)—it is higher than the nation's (9.9)—and the city's rate (13.5), which is higher than the state's. The city's long-term success depends on its schools, in many of which most of the children come from homes without fathers, and in some of which, Villaraigosa says, 40 percent of the children are in foster homes. He has little control over the school system and, anyway, unions oppose radical reforms. He would like to emulate the education reforms of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a recent visitor to the mayor's residence, but, holding his fingers three inches apart to suggest the thickness of the standard contract with the teachers' union, Villaraigosa calls the union "the most powerful defender of the status quo."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237640
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