Category Archives: Fraud Waste and Abuse

Articles, information, and editorials on fraud, waste, and abuse in government and in the private sector.

2009-2010 City of El Segundo Separations due to Budgetary Reasons Mostly Early Retirements

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Mike

by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org

March 20, 2014

Mayor Bill Fisher Continues his Campaign of Deception as He Runs for Re-Election

El Segundo Mayor Bill Fisher wants voters to believe he reduced the City’s wildly excessive and unsustainable employee compensation costs by reducing City employee salaries by significant amounts. He also wants us to believe there were substantial numbers of City employee layoffs. These are not true.

Fisher supported wildly excessive pay raises of 11.25% to 32.3% over three years for the already overpaid firefighter and police unions and their managers. These raises were approved by the City Council on April 7, 2009 and December 2, 2008, long after the Great Recession began, and include retroactive raises effective 6 and 9 months before they were approved on April 7, 2009. These raises were in addition to the automatic 5% “Step” raises firefighters and police are given each year for the four or five years after they year they are assigned to a new job position.

See City of El Segundo Can Save $3.3 Million Per Year in Employee Pension Costs for more details and documentation on those raises.

City employees received huge permanent pay raises, but most of their “concessions” were temporary, with the net result being increased employee compensation and increased pension costs to the City. Concessions included things like temporary one-time “unpaid” furlough days, which are like unpaid vacation days, and temporary suspension of cash-outs of accumulated unused vacation and sick leave hours. The firefighters and police were paid “Special Compensation” for those “unpaid” furlough days, which averages 33.5% of their regular earnings.

The alleged “reductions in salary” were achieved by temporary unpaid furlough days, temporary suspension of cash-out of accumulated unused vacation and sick leave hours, temporary reduction in overtime hours in 2010, and early retirements – many of them with lucrative and expensive incentives. No employees had their hourly pay rates reduced.

There were 26 City employee separations in 2009 and 2010 for budgetary reasons, and only 5 of those were layoffs. The rest were early retirements.

The employee separation data is shown in the following table … Continue reading →

Posted in California, El Segundo, El Segundo Election Coverage, El Segundo News, El Segundo Tax and Fee Increases, Elections, Firefighter and Police Union Compensation and Pensions, Firefighter Union Corruption, Fraud Waste and Abuse, Government Employee Compensation and Pensions, Police Union Corruption, Political Corruption, Politics, Union Corruption | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2009-2010 City of El Segundo Separations due to Budgetary Reasons Mostly Early Retirements

Fire Union Bankrolling “Yes on A” Campaign – Letter to the El Segundo Herald by Marianne Fong

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Mike

Fire Union Bankrolling “Yes on A” Campaign

Be sure to read the entire Measure A arguments and rebuttals in the Sample Ballot. Mayor Fisher put Measure A on the April ballot – BEFORE the City Council will negotiate new long-term union contracts later this year. Measure A weakens the Council’s bargaining position, and Fisher wants us to vote before we know the size of pay raises he will put into those contracts. That is bad timing!

The fire union PAC gave $5,000 to the “Yes on Measure A” campaign – just for starters. The fire and police unions spend lots of money in City elections to put a thousand times more in their paychecks and pensions. They ratchet up their pay and pensions – and our taxes and fees!

In 2009, average firefighter annual individual total compensation was $211,000. The highest was $342,000. The average for police officers was $178,000 and the highest was $304,000. Fisher supported big pay raises every year since then. … Continue reading →

Posted in El Segundo, El Segundo Election Coverage, El Segundo Herald Letters, El Segundo News, El Segundo Tax and Fee Increases, Elections, Firefighter and Police Union Compensation and Pensions, Firefighter Union Corruption, Fraud Waste and Abuse, Government Employee Compensation and Pensions, Letters to the Editor, Police Union Corruption, Political Corruption, Politics, Tax Policy and Issues, Union Corruption | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fire Union Bankrolling “Yes on A” Campaign – Letter to the El Segundo Herald by Marianne Fong

Wrong Time to Raise Taxes and Fees in El Segundo

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Mike

by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org

March 3, 2014
Updated and expanded March 6, 2014.

This is the wrong time to raise taxes and fees on residents and businesses in El Segundo, for multiple reasons.

First, the existing three-year City employee union contracts are expiring later this year, and the City Council will negotiate new union contracts later this year after the April 8, 2014 City election. Raising taxes and fees before then will greatly weaken the City Council’s bargaining position with the unions, especially the politically active and extremely aggressive firefighter and police unions, which are the primary cause of the City’s financial problems.

Second, Mayor Bill Fisher and Councilmembers David Atkinson and Marie Fellhauer have claimed that the City’s financial problems are largely due to El Segundo receiving a lower percentage of the property taxes generated from property in the City than other cities in California receive.

That claim is false for multiple reasons.

The percentage of total property tax revenue generated in El Segundo that the City receives has not changed in many years, and the last time it changed, it went up due to the extraordinary efforts of Mayor Carl Jacobson. In fact, although El Segundo gets about 6.2% of the property tax revenues generated by property in the city, compared to the average of 11% for all 88 cities in Los Angeles County, El Segundo property values are much higher than the values in many other cities. The higher property values in El Segundo help compensate for the lower than average percent of property tax revenue allocated to the City of El Segundo.

But most striking is the fact that the City is receiving the highest amount of property tax revenues it has received in any year since fiscal year 2000/2001, and probably in the City’s entire history, as shown by the bar chart below. The FY 2012/2013 property tax revenue is at a record high of $6,332,163 – up by 46% and $1,994,509 above FY 2000/2001 property tax revenue. Property tax revenue has increased in 9 of the last 13 fiscal years, with an average yearly increase of 3.6% and $166,209.


Bar chart of the City of El Segundo, California property tax revenues for fiscal years 2000/2001 through 2012/2013, using data from official City of El Segundo records.

Mayor Fisher and Councilmembers Atkinson and Fellhauer have repeatedly berated El Segundo residents for not paying enough property taxes. City residents paid about $20,770,813 in property taxes in FY 2012/2013, which is about 20.9% of the total, of which $1,287,790 came back to the City (about 6.2%). The 20.9% figure is not surprising given that only about 25% of the city’s land area is residential property and about 75% is industrial and commercial … Continue reading →

Posted in Economy and Economics, El Segundo, El Segundo News, El Segundo Tax and Fee Increases, Elections, Firefighter and Police Union Compensation and Pensions, Firefighter Union Corruption, Fraud Waste and Abuse, Government Employee Compensation and Pensions, Police Union Corruption, Political Corruption, Politics, Tax Policy and Issues, Union Corruption | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Wrong Time to Raise Taxes and Fees in El Segundo

A Victory for El Segundo Residents and Residential Property Owners (House or Two Units)

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Mike

by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org

January 19, 2011

Congratulations! We won again! Thank you for sending in your Proposition 218 Trash Fee Protest Ballots before the deadline. A total of 1,850 unverified protest ballots were sent to City Hall, and only a total of 1,439 verified protest ballots were needed to defeat the new residential trash collection fee. The City Council voted 3-2 at its January 18, 2011 meeting, to accept the unverified protest ballots as sufficient without having the City Clerk’s staff spend the time to open all the envelopes, verify that the ballots were properly completed and signed, and count the valid ones that are not duplicates from owners and tenants of the same property.

City Council member Don Brann made the motion to accept the unverified protest ballots as sufficient. Mayor Eric Busch tried to ignore the motion and said that the City Clerk would come back to the City Council with the results after the protest ballots were verified and counted. Council member Don Brann caught this apparent maneuver to avoid a vote and move on to the next agenda item, and he stated that he made a motion. Council member Carl Jacobson seconded the motion for discussion. After brief discussion, Council member Don Brann asked for a vote. Mayor Eric Busch and Mayor Pro Tem Bill Fisher voted “NO”, and Council members Don Brann, Carl Jacobson, and Suzanne Fuentes voted “Yes” on the motion.
This vote by mail election used a strange system where properties for which no Protest Ballot is completed, signed, and returned before the deadline COUNT AS YES VOTES, and Protest Ballots from both the owner and tenant(s) of the same property COUNT AS ONLY ONE NO VOTE.

The first year of the trash fee would have cost residents an estimated $560,700, which is less than the estimated $596,657 total compensation paid to former El Segundo Police Chief David Cummings in 2009 from all sources – including his city contract and pension income while working for the city after his retirement. This is an enormous amount of compensation for any city, but especially for the City of El Segundo, California, which has about 5.5 square miles and about 16,000 or 17,000 population. … Continue reading →

Posted in California, El Segundo, El Segundo Election Coverage, El Segundo News, El Segundo Tax and Fee Increases, Elections, Firefighter and Police Union Compensation and Pensions, Fraud Waste and Abuse, Government Employee Compensation and Pensions, News, Political Corruption, Politics, Tax Policy and Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Victory for El Segundo Residents and Residential Property Owners (House or Two Units)