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1. Pension deal was a long time coming

   By The Bakersfield Californian

   Tuesday, Feb 21 2012 11:08 PM

   After a yearlong stalemate, Kern County supervisors and two of the area's largest public safety unions seem to have found common ground on a new contract. Written by a mediator, the contract requires employees to contribute to health care and pension costs in exchange for a modest 2 percent raise over the next three years. The offer is a sensible one in light of the protracted and acrimonious negotiations of the past year and a half. Given the dubious stability of pension arrangements across the U.S., local union members will be wise to approve it.

   The county's goal all along was to obtain concessions on retirement and health benefits without giving out raises in return. That was a long shot; the county's desire to address retirement and health costs is understandable but getting something from nothing is not how bargaining usually works. Not surprisingly, the union balked and dug in its heels.

   Supervisors were right to seek ways to reduce costs for employee benefits. The county's pension fund is drastically underfunded and more and more county money has gone to annual funding of the system, causing steep cuts to public services. Union members may not be responsible for the market gyrations that sent the retirement system into a nosedive. But the same is true of private sector workers who saw their 401(k) plans drop by 40 percent and more. Fault is not the issue here. Everyone is dealing with sacrifice these days, and when unions insist that they should be exempt, it stokes the public's ire. Most of the local county unions have recognized this fact and offered to help.

   The fact is, public safety employees' benefits are the most generous benefits enjoyed by county employees and, consequently, the most costly. A switch from the 3-at-50 retirement promise to 2-at-50 for new hires, and more contributions to retirement costs, is a solid step forward in bringing down those costs while still providing benefits unique to the demands of public safety.

   Other jurisdictions have cut pension costs with similar reforms, and even Gov. Jerry Brown has called for later retirement ages for public safety workers in his pension reform proposal.

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2. CSUB's new engineering programs mean progress

   Cal State Bakersfield continues to move toward relevancy in a most essential field of study: engineering. The university's faculty has OK'd the creation of its second and third engineering degree programs -- electrical engineering and engineering science.

3. OUR VIEW: Is a two-year budget cycle right for state?

   Here's a ballot initiative worth watching. California Forward, the government reform group that's been instrumental in passing initiatives on redistricting, open primaries and a simple majority vote for budgets, is supporting a measure this year to switch to a two-year state budget cycle. The group donated nearly $1 million last week to a signature drive for the measure, which also received $1.2 million from billionaire Nicolas Berggruen. So why would we drag out the already torturous budgeting of state finances to two years?

4. OUR VIEW: Industry is helping to fill the US training gap

   We often think of government and public money when we hear about workforce preparation and economic development programs. But it's important to recognize the strong role industry and corporations also play, as evidenced by Chevron and its recent $1.5 million contribution to local math and science education programs.

5. HITS & MISSES: A new future for troubled East Hills Mall

   HIT: The purchase of East Hills Mall by Modesto-based Save Mart Supermarkets can only be a good thing. The struggling indoor shopping center has been a shadow of its former self over the past few years. That's a shame, because the location is attractive and northeast Bakersfield residents need and deserve the shopping.

6. OUR VIEW: Kern's issue bigger than mailed condoms

   It's difficult to imagine the California Department of Public Health's free condoms-by-mail program, announced last week, having a significant impact on Kern County's high birthrate and incidence of sexually transmitted disease among teens. That's not to say it won't help -- it well may.

7. OUR VIEW: Value of contraceptives goes beyond pregnancy prevention

   In case you missed it, Rick Santorum's big-money donor, 71-year-old Foster Friess, recently told NBC's Andrea Mitchell an old joke. In his day, he said, birth control was so simple aspirin did the trick: Girls simply held one between their knees. In other words, if women just kept their legs shut, they wouldn't need birth control.

9. OUR VIEW: Take high school journalism online

   Randy Hamm, the adviser for East High School's student newspaper, is exactly right: local students are being shortchanged by administrators who won't allow high school newspapers to go online.

10. OUR VIEW: Iran's embargo threat offers a local lesson

    The good-cop, bad-cop routine Iran has adopted in its dealings with world condemnation of its nuclear program validates what Kern County power producers have long been convinced of: Global instability requires that America continue to work toward energy independence.

11. OUR VIEW: Assembly leaders were wrong on two counts

    In a year of extreme state budget cuts, the California Assembly apparently saw nothing wrong with unloading $200,000 on a legal fight to prevent the release of its members' budgets, which the Assembly has long claimed to be off-limits to the public. Is it any wonder there's a movement afoot to make the Legislature part-time?

12. OUR VIEW: Deputies' drug testing makes perfect sense

    Leaders of the union representing local deputies are conditionally on board with a random drug-testing policy supported by Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, as they should be. The policy makes sense -- and not just for the Sheriff's Department.

13. OUR VIEW: Jail expansion question needs outside analysis

    Really? It's cheaper to spend $100 million to expand the Lerdo Jail than to lease three vacant city-owned prisons in Kern County? That's how Sheriff Donny Youngblood has put it to supervisors ever since the state began requiring counties to take in more state prisoners.

14. OUR VIEW: FPPC needs to grow back its regulatory teeth

    The Fair Political Practices Commission, under relatively new leadership, was supposed to be reassuring California voters that it has racheted up its scrutiny of political fundraising and other, related affairs of elective government.