There are several reasons for someone to run for public office. My journey set its own course, thanks to the nature of my previous occupation. As a certified public accountant, I would be asked to serve on nonprofit boards and invariably become the organization’s treasurer. So when I was asked to run for county treasurer, I rebelled.
I would be appointed to replace the incumbent and serve as the Orange County treasurer-tax collector for 12 years. After the board of supervisors voted to approve massive increases in employee pension plan benefits, creating massive unfunded actuarial accrued liabilities, I decided to run for the board in 2006 and utilize my financial background in this public office.
Due to the bankruptcy, Orange County voters placed a two-term limit on county supervisors. I had only eight years to get several fiscal goals accomplished. At the conclusion of my time in this position, I was interviewed by investigative reporter and former Los Angeles Times columnist Heidi Cuda, then writing for Public Sector Inc., to review what I had accomplished. Here is the result:
‘Moorlach’s Little List’
“Here’s what the list looked like and how he faired:“‘That’s a quote from a Long Beach Press Telegram article from 2005,’ says Moorlach. ‘We’ve accomplished that. We’ve just completed our negotiations with every bargaining unit. We have one unit that we’re still dealing with, the attorney’s association—it’s a long story—but overall management and employees are responsible for paying for their share of pensions.’
“‘We negotiated that back in 2009,’ he says. ‘Governor Brown did it with his pension reform, but what we did in ’09 was we made it optional. The younger kids would take the lower formula.’
“‘I tried to put that in the charter for the November ballot,’ says Moorlach. ‘My colleagues didn’t give me the third vote. Two were running for additional office. I put this one in the “fail” column.’
“‘We called this Measure J, and it was wholeheartedly passed by the voters in 2008,’ he says.
“‘I tried to do it,’ he says. ‘I just didn’t get traction.’
“‘We tried this with Prop. 32 (2012). ... This was a fail.’
“‘It’s just one of the abuses that I observed,’ says Moorlach. ‘So what I did when I got here, I required an outside legal firm to be our negotiators ... we got that taken care of.’
“‘That was done in ’09, it’s now 65 here at the county,’ he says. ‘That was part of the two-tier change.’
“‘I got this from the state of Georgia,’ he says. ‘If you’re gonna negotiate a pension benefit increase that creates an immediate liability, you got to pay for it immediately. Because we did Measure J, I felt like we got it covered. For more than 25 years, it wasn’t required to put the real cost of pension increases on the ballot sheets. It was in the shadows.’
“‘This was accomplished by PEPRA (Governor Brown’s Public Employee Pension Reform Act in 2012),’ he says.
‘I just didn’t get to it,’ he says.
“‘That’s a quote from the Voice of San Diego in 2006,’ says Moorlach. ‘We took this to trial, filing a lawsuit against the Deputy Sheriffs [union] for getting three percent at 50.’
“But he says, even though it was technically illegal according to the state constitution, politics got in the way and pension debt was made exempt. In 2011, the California Supreme Court chose not to hear the lawsuit.
“‘We tried real hard but failed.’
“‘This was about the acquisition of life insurance contracts using the pooling technique,’ he says. ‘If you insure your employees, when they pass away, you could pay off part of the pensions. This was too hard a sell. If you can’t explain something to the public sector in 30 seconds, forget about it.’
“‘We adopted (this) and we got it,’ he says. ‘It’s nice for the public to see the crazy offers that they put on the first round. It changes the whole dynamic.’ [It was referred to as COIN (Civic Openness in Negotiations) and used around the nation, but eliminated by California’s public employees unions in the state legislature.]