Legal News You Can Use
By Stephen T. Holzer
This is sure to get tongues a-waggin'...
News organizations are reporting that 13 lifeguards in Newport Beach earn from $120,000 to $211,000 per year (with more than half earning over $150,000/year) and retire at age 50 with pensions in at least one case reaching $108,000 per year. See Business Insider for May 11, 2011, http://www.businessinsider.com/newport-beach-lifeguards-2011-5; Orange County Register for May 10, 2011; http://orangepunch.ocregister.com/2011/05/10/lifeguarding-in-oc-is-totally-lucrative-some-make-over-200k/44783/. Moreover, per a spokesman for the Lifeguard Management Association, these salaries are "very fair and reasonable salaries in conjunction with comparable positions and other cities up and down the coast."
Whether or not these salaries and benefits are shocking of course depends on your perspective The Orange County Register article, for instance, points out that being a lifeguard doesn't simply involve sitting on an elevated tower all day long and getting a nice tan-- per the Register, in 2010 the Newport Beach lifeguards rescued 2,190 people.
Nonetheless, with median household income in Orange County being only $71,735 and with budget crises affecting nearly every jurisdiction in Southern California, lifeguard pay packages are sure to be controversial. Even if local jurisdictions can renegotiate salaries and pensions for the future, the governments are stuck with the pension obligations already incurred. And the pension obligations will most likely be the more controversial part of the pay packages, because the benefits are arguably very generous when compared with what occurs in the private sector.
The Orange County lifeguard situation is, of course, a prime illustration of the stark choices facing taxpayers throughout the State and the Nation. On the one hand, the lifeguards like others perform a public service; on the other hand, at compensation levels like these governments cannot afford to keep paying unless either spending on other projects is cut and/or revenues increase. There is little agreement on how to accomplish either of these things. On the tax side, for instance, some argue that to raise revenues one must increase taxes while others argue that cutting taxes would promote economic activity and thus actually result in increased tax revenue.
You can try your own hand at eliminating the State's Budget shortfall by going to http://www.latimes.com/news/local/budget/, where you will be presented with spending cuts/tax increases that you would be prepared to implement to attempt to solve the present crisis.
San Francisco continues to make headlines
The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco was directed by the Church to stop placing children for adoption with homosexual couples. This decision prompted the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to adopt a resolution referring to the Vatican as a "foreign country" and condemning the Church’s decision as "hateful", "insulting and callous", "defamatory" and "insensitive and ignorant". Source: Catholic News Agency, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-challenging-sf-anti-catholic-resolution/.
That reaction in turn resulted in a now-familiar response-- litigation. The Church sued the Board on the basis that its action promoted a hostile environment to religion and thus violated the First Amendment.
The Courts did not agree. In a five-to-three vote, a panel of the Ninth Circuit federal Court of Appeals rejected the Church's challenge, finding that the Church lacked standing to sue. All that the SF Board had done was to express a condemnation of a Church policy but had not taken any actual action to interfere with the policy. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently declined to review the propriety of the Ninth Circuit's ruling.
The case presents an interesting issue as to how far government can go in criticizing religious practice without at some point creating a public anti-religious bias. This, however, apparently was not that point.
Stephen Holzer practices law at the Encino law firm of Lewitt Hackman Shapiro Marshall & Harlan, specializing in business litigation and environmental matters, and is the Immediate Past Chair of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. He can be reached at sholzer@lewitthackman.com or 818-907-3299 with any questions about this column.