Despite Deficit, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputies May Get Raises. Sacramento County faces a $180 million deficit, leading the county's top executive to propose laying off 521 workers, including 300 sheriff's deputies, and cutting 421 vacant positions. But The Sacramento Bee noted in a June 10 editorial: "In the midst of the budget crisis, Sacramento County is still offering its sheriff's deputies a 2.9 percent raise next year. That's less than the 6.9 percent boost originally scheduled, but a raise nonetheless. So while psychotic patients are going untreated and county workers are being laid off by the hundreds, deputies are still being offered a 2.9 percent pay raise."
The Bee continued: "It's difficult to generate a sense of urgency about the county's financial plight when the county's deputies are being offered a pay raise. Sacramento taxpayers should be disgusted. Wall Street experts who monitor the county's handling of its finances certainly are. Last week, the credit rating service Moody's downgraded Sacramento County's credit rating from A1 to A2. The analysis that accompanied the downgrade was as illuminating as it was scathing. 'The negative outlook reflects both the circumstances in which the county finds itself and, more importantly, the fact that the county has no recent history of anything other than expedient one-time fixes to budgetary imbalances,' Moody's analysts state."
The editorial calls on county supervisors to "demonstrate the political will to stand up to powerful constituents, especially powerful public employee unions," and reject the pay raises. (Source: The Sacramento Bee, June 10.)
Cal-Taxletter, June 12, 2009
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