· WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON?

Currently we have been holding Meet and Confer sessions with management to overhaul the FTO Program Selection Process. Many members feel as if the current system is unfair and has failed to give everyone a fair chance to participate. I have laid the complaints at the feet of management along with possible solutions. Our message has been received and when all is said and done we hope to have a system in place that has addressed everyone's concerns as best as possible.

We have also requested a Meet and Confer to discuss several final wording mistakes on our new MOU along with CPT versus Vacation and other long standing nagging issues surrounding the Jails. As some of these things get settled out, I will send out updates on them.

· BUDGET

The first half of 2010 has been wild. We in Law Enforcement have been made the scapegoat for all that is wrong with the California budget. We have endured two years without a raise; to be followed by two more before the trend has any chance of changing. Every day brings new attacks on our benefits. When all is said and done, I believe this year will only be the beginning of the 'Perfect Storm' to follow. There are currently several Senate Bills being discussed to rein in 'Ventura' along with the threat by the Govenator to veto any budget that does not include pension reform.

To make matters worse, most of this year's financial gains were wiped out this month over European economic fears. Unfortunately, bad financial news only fuels the fire. This coming 2010/2011 fiscal year will bring its own set of challenges for us.

The Sheriff's Office faces a $30 million cut in funding. What does that mean to us? Well the reality is this: $30 million is equal to 180 Deputy Positions. The Sheriff has said he will not cut deputy positions and I believe him. The real question is, "Can we make those cuts without layoffs"? I am not so sure. I think it depends upon how many people retire over the next year. That coupled with cutting overtime, shrinking our training budget, along with other cost saving measures may get us there. Time will tell how we weather this storm.

· DC

The trip to Washington DC was excellent. For several of the Deputies involved in the tragic loss of Mark Dunakin, Daniel Sakai, Ervin Romans and John Hege, it was a fitting closure. Everyone agreed that making the trip and being a part of all the various ceremonies was something they would recommend as a 'Must Do' to anyone in our business. Dave Dickson said, "The Candlelight Vigil was absolutely the most emotional event I have ever attended." The Mastagni Law Firm flew out and hosted a dinner in honor of Derek Pope, Ronaldo Ejansantos and Mike Bitle for their contribution during the Oakland shooting.

If you have not participated in National Law Enforcement Week, but would like to, start planning. It is my hope to make this an annual trek for DSA members and their families. I hope to hold several fundraisers to help lower the cost of the trip for everyone who goes. I would like have 20-25 members make this trip every year. Captain Dave Brady is also hoping to put together a Unity Tour Team that bicycles the 300 plus mile trip each year from New Jersey to DC in honor of the Fallen. If you think you would be interested in planning, or attending next year's event, email Aerin at dsaoffice@acsodsa.org and let her know.

· COMING SOON

This July, Wednesday the 14^th and Saturday the 17^th we will be hosting Master Everest Pepper from the Academy of Self Defense for his, "Surviving Edged Weapons" seminar. This will be a four hour seminar, limited to 24 participants in each class. If you are interested in participating you will need to call Aerin at 925-463-3760, or email her at dsaoffice@acsodsa.org so she can generate an interest list. The seminar will cost $59.00 and includes a T-shirt.

Master Pepper has studied Hopkido Ho-Sinsul for over 35 years and holds Black belts in Eskrima, Tae Kwon Do, and Krav Maga. He studied Eskrima with the late Grand Master Mike Enayan, along with Danny Insanto. He has several decades of real world knife fighting experience and has made a career out of passing his knowledge on to Military Special Operations Units and Law Enforcement Officers for nearly two decades. Don't miss this opportunity.

Below I have included some articles written about pensions, just to give you a taste of what's out there on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

David B. Harris, President

· California's Mess

Steven Greenhut is the author of "Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives And Bankrupting the Nation."

There's no denying that California's pension problem has turned into a full-fledged fiscal crisis. Unfunded pension liabilities are soaring - as high as one half-trillion dollars, according to a recent Stanford University estimate - as the result of a market downturn, followed by years of absurdly generous pension increases for government employees. The state's $100,000 pension club has more than 15,000 members from all retirement systems - and the numbers are growing rapidly.

California voters are going to have to take matters into their own hands, through the state's clumsy initiative process.

Not only libertarian and conservative government critics have been noticing. Former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown wrote in his San Francisco Chronicle column early this year that "[W]e politicians - pushed by our friends in labor - gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages." The chief actuary for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) called the current pension system "unsustainable."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pension adviser, David Crane, recently told a state Senate hearing on pension reform, "One cannot both be a progressive and be opposed to pension reform. The math is irrefutable that the losers from excessive and unfunded pensions are precisely the programs progressive Democrats tend to applaud. Those programs are being driven out of existence by rising pension costs."

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Yet the modest reform legislation Mr. Crane backed, which would have provided a still-generous second retirement tier for new hires, was dead on arrival in the Democratic-dominated Legislature, which has simply ignored these compelling "depletion of services" arguments. In California, there is no hope of reform coming from the Legislature, period. California voters - who are showing signs of agitation at the pension debt and the unfairness of the current system - are going to have to take matters into their own hands, through the state's clumsy initiative process.

Courts have ruled that current pension deals are vested benefits that cannot be reduced, but there's no reason not to fix the problem going forward. No initiative has so far gotten the backing necessary, but that's only a matter of time. When unions complain about their vilification in a coming battle, they and their political allies will only have themselves to blame for ignoring the words of progressive Democrats like Willie Brown and David Crane.

• Hysteria Now Won't Help

Alicia H. Munnell, a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers, is the Peter F. Drucker professor of management sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and director of the college's Center for Retirement Research.

Public pension plans - like the rest of us - are suffering from the financial crisis and ensuing recession. States and localities were on a path toward full funding, but they were seriously knocked off track with the collapse of asset prices.

Better accounting might have helped avoid the benefit liberalizations that took place in the 1990s when many plans appeared to be overfunded.

Between 2008 and 2009, the ratio of assets to liabilities for a sample of 126 plans in a report conducted by the Center for Retirement Research dropped to 78 percent from 84 percent, and ratios are likely to continue declining for the next five years as actuaries average in the losses.

It is true that the financial numbers would look worse under more appropriate accounting. Discounting liabilities by a low rate that reflects the riskless nature of the liabilities (that is, the benefits being guaranteed) would reduce the 2009 funded ratio to 55 percent.

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Better accounting in the past would have led to more assets today and may have helped avoid the benefit liberalizations that took place in the 1990s when many plans appeared to be overfunded.

For example, in 1997 CalPERS, the California public employees' pension system, reported that assets equaled 111 percent of liabilities. In response, the California legislature enhanced benefits for current and future employees. If CalPERS liabilities had been valued at a riskless rate, the plan would have been only 76 percent funded.

Although the present value of promised benefits depends on the choice of the discount rate, the promised benefits themselves do not. When teachers or firefighters retire, they will get the amount calculated under the plan provisions, and how that future amount is reported today has no impact on the ultimate payment.

Moreover, an average ratio of assets to annual benefits of 15 (among the sample of plans in the Center's study) suggests that plans - with notable exceptions such as most Illinois plans, Oklahoma Teachers and New Jersey Teachers - have enough on hand to pay benefits for decades. So liquidity is generally not an issue.

The key question is what should be done. A major increase in contributions is not realistic at this time. Because of court rulings, states and localities have virtually no ability to cut benefits for existing employees and may have only limited ability to increase employee contributions. And any changes for new employees will take a long time to have any substantial effect.

That means if funding levels are to be restored quickly, the money must come primarily from taxes. But the recession has significantly reduced tax revenues and increased the demand for services. Thus, finding additional taxes will be extremely difficult. The only real option is to wait for the market and the economy to recover.

• The Right Pension Plan

Teresa Ghilarducci, director of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research, is the author of "When I'm 64: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them."

Most public employees have pensions plans most every worker wants and should have. The defined benefit plans provide a benefit credit for every year of service tied to an employee's wage.

Employees and employers should pay more in good times and less in bad times.

Employers and employees contribute, professionals invest the money for a low fee and the benefit is paid out as a pension for life. Even better, the funds are invested in the economy to promote growth and public pensioners provide consumer demand when they retire. And, unlike 401(k) plans workers can't spend the funds before retirement.

The core benefit design is good. But cheating is not.

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I was a trustee of the Indiana public employees' pension plan in the late 1990s and early 2000. We made mistakes but we had good bones. Today the fund is not hugely underfunded, which means cities and the state do not have to make large and unexpected contributions in a recession.

Indiana public employers and employees always contributed - there were no pension holidays. In the go-go years we didn't invest in what we didn't understand. No Enron, no derivatives, very little private equity, no hedge funds. We kept the assumed interest rate assumptions on the low side.

In contrast, in good times many states and municipalities speculated that their funds would earn high rates of return so they could contribute less: their taxpayers, by the way, benefited in the short-term and shouldn't complain now that it is payback. Pension funding should work the opposite way: employees and employers should pay more in good times and less in bad times. The funding status should range from about 120 percent to 80 percent. There are technical ways to do that; they have to be embedded in the funding design.