by Jeff Davis

Cities and states across America are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and resorting to extraordinary measures to cut employee costs. One of the ways in which private sector employers have avoided paying benefits such as medical insurance is through the use of temporary employees or contractors. Now it looks like this practice is being adopted by state and local governments many of which are on the verge of bankruptcy.

The [1] Wall Street Journal reports: “Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, Calif., recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city’s budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million. To keep all its swimming pools open and staffed, the city is replacing some city workers with contractors. After years of whittling staff and cutting back on services, towns and cities are now outsourcing some of the most basic functions of local government, from policing to trash collection. Services that cities can no longer afford to provide are being contracted to private vendors, counties or even neighboring towns. The move saves cities budget-crushing costs of employee benefits like health insurance and retirement. Maywood, a tiny city southeast of Los Angeles, is taking contracting to the extreme. The city of around 40,000 is letting go of its entire staff and contracting with outsiders to perform all city services. The city is disbanding its police force and handing public safety over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Its neighbor, the city of Bell, will take over running Maywood’s City Hall.”

In California especially, the problem is the demand by public employees and their powerful unions for bloated pensions as well as medical insurance. California’s benefits were among the best in the world, but they can no longer be paid for, because the productive White people who constitute the California tax base are fleeing the state by the millions at the same time that millions of additional illegal aliens are invading the state demanding free public school education for their kids, free emergency room care and other hand outs. Unlike Arizona, few politicians in California are willing to do anything about the illegals. It’s like steering a bus by committee and the majority want to go off a cliff.

Recently Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared he would lower the pay of state workers to minimum wage as an emergency move to deal with the state budget crisis. One [2] article reports “the Schwarzenegger administration won an appellate court ruling saying it has the authority to impose the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour on more than 200,000 state workers as California wrestles with its latest budget crisis… A cut to a minimum wage would mean state workers would make the equivalent of $15,000 a year. The average state worker makes $65,000 annually, according to the state Department of Personnel Administration… Schwarzenegger’s minimum wage order will not affect all of California’s government employees. The 37,000 state workers represented by unions that recently negotiated new contracts with the administration will continue to receive their full pay because they agreed to pay cuts and pension reforms.”

It’s not clear how long salaries would be cut to minimum wage. This is likely an arm-twisting move by the governor to get the legislature to agree to other cuts. The budget deficit however is very real, and the $13.1 billion per year that illegal aliens cost the state of California is a big factor that the Democrats don’t want to do anything about.

Schwarzenegger wanted the union workers in the state to take a five percent pay cut, but that didn’t go over well. At some point very soon, the bloated pay and pensions of union workers will cease to be paid because the state simply runs out of money. The welfare checks will stop too.

When that happens, Blacks and illegal aliens will riot in the streets, and there may not be any police left on the public payroll to stop them because at some point the money will run out to pay the cops, assuming they haven’t been replaced by minimum wage security guards by then.

Life could get very interesting, very soon. Just make sure you have plenty of canned food, guns and ammo.