Two strategies to avoid LA City going bancrupt.
The City of San Diego, like most California cities and other local agencies, such as the LAUSD, are facing the same financial crisis as the City of Los Angeles. In the case of San Diego, some uninformed people have proposed having the city declare bankruptcy as a device to cancel pension payments. The mayor of San Diego argues that this strategy will not work, and instead the city should pursue a combination of pay cuts for current employees with increased retirement deductions. The San Diego mayor's alternative to bankruptcy of reducing compensation to current employees while increasing their retirement deductions is already being pursued by the City of Los Angeles -- with disastrous results. But neither alternative -- bankruptcy or cutbacks -- is desirable or inevitable. The real thrust of labor should be: 1) Identifying financial resources which, if collected, would prevent cutbacks on public services through furloughs, layoffs, and increased deductions. The obvious sourc