Lobdell: Leece is no traitor

I don’t buy that Wendy Leece — who practically bleeds red, white and blue elephants — is a traitor to the local Republican Party.

The Costa Mesa councilwoman got sideways with GOP leaders last month for allegedly breaking a promise to get tough on police and firefighter pay and benefits.

After securing the Republican Party’s endorsement, Leece voted with the council majority to approve multi-year contracts for police officers and city workers that contained concessions that still left Costa Mesa about $6.5 million in the red this fiscal year.

Since then, Leece has been chastised publicly by former allies and summoned before the GOP’s local ethics committee.

She narrowly beat a long-shot candidate to win reelection earlier this month; the slim margin of victory for the generally popular public servant had to be related to her controversial union vote.

And threats of a recall — something not legally possible, considering Leece has been freshly reelected — were even heard.

When I sat down with Leece the other day at Mimi’s Café in Costa Mesa (by the way, why is that place so popular with the over-90 crowd?), she not surprisingly offered a different version of the story.

She said she only promised, in writing, last summer to not accept any government union money for her campaign, a vow the local GOP wanted from all Republicans.

At the time she made the pledge, Costa Mesa had already been negotiating for months with its police and city employee unions for a new contract. Leece believed the concessions ultimately made by the police union — for officers to pay a 5% contribution to their pension fund — were groundbreaking and a promising start to curbing excessive public safety compensation.

“You can’t eat an elephant all at once,” said Leece, who is also hopeful reform can be enacted statewide, maybe through the initiative process. “You have to do it bite by bite.”

There are plenty of twists and turns to this saga, but they would bore anyone who doesn’t have a Ph.D. in local political geekology. Here’s the bottom line: The local GOP has taken a hard line on public compensation and pension reform, rightly noting that our local, regional and state governments face insolvency unless necessary adjustments are made soon.

And local public servants such as Leece find themselves in political no man’s land when it comes to compensation for police and firefighters. The politicians are charged with keeping the city running smoothly, but still need to weigh the long-term consequences of their decisions.

Leece voted to approve multi-year contracts for police and city workers that are expected to save taxpayers $7.2 million over the short-term. But in the long run, continuing to allow police and firefighters to receive unsustainable compensation packages will lead to bankruptcy.

For instance, public safety employees can now retire at age 50 with 3% of their salary for each year served. For instance, they would receive 90% of their last year’s salary after 30 years on the force, plus full benefits.

These deals have left governments throughout California with unfunded liabilities that have soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars with no solution in sight.

In Costa Mesa, Leece said she feels comfortable that she worked out the best compromise she could at the time. In the next round of negotiations, more concessions can be made.

And as a longtime and loyal GOP activist, Leece was stunned and offended that she’s been treated like she had just endorsed “Obamacare.”

The local GOP leaders “want to put a principle above my civic duty to balance a budget,” Leece said. “The party shouldn’t overrule a council member on an issue that involves the finances of the city. My job is to make sure my city is well-ordered, efficient and runs in a safe manner.”

Plus, she wonders why she took the brunt of the GOP’s criticism. Gary Monahan, another Costa Mesa Republican council member, also voted for the new contracts.

“I do not think any other council member in any other city was told to do what I was being told to do,” Leece said. “I just think they thought I would comply and be submissive to them. Well, I have a brain.”

I believe Leece — along with Monahan and Councilwoman Katrina Foley — made a mistake in not negotiating from the start a better deal with the government unions (Leece makes the excellent point that by October, if she and others would have changed direction, the city would have faced legal action for bad-faith bargaining. And Councilman Eric Bever abandoned ship and refused to attend closed session meetings about the negotiations.)

Their decision will soon trigger another $6.5 million in cuts to a pretty lean city budget, meaning more layoffs are on their way. And over time, the budget damage is even greater.

Leece has said that Costa Mesa shouldn’t be ground zero for police and firefighter pay and pension reform.

“It’s a risk I don’t want to take to lessen the quality of our public safety for our residents just to be ground zero and be famous for it,” Leece said. “There is a downside, including expensive legal fees and increased bad will.”

But she and her council allies have spent a tremendous amount of energy making the city ground zero in the fight against illegal immigration. For the city’s long-term health, wouldn’t it be better to make Costa Mesa the epicenter for compensation reform instead of spending so much energy on an easier target not protected by powerful unions?

Though I disagree with Leece on several issues, I love having her represent me on the council. She does her homework, puts in the time and cares deeply. She also has a humility and honesty (she admits to hating most of the photos of herself that run in the Pilot) that’s appealing.

If the local GOP asked Leece to sign a pledge to roll back the 3% at age 50 provisions in public safety union contracts, I could see labeling Leece as Costa Mesa’s Benedict Arnold. But she only signed off on refusing government union money for her campaign.

She also promised verbally to help reform the public safety compensation system, though she hasn’t been doing it with the swiftness and bluntness hoped for by local Republican Party officials.

I’d suggest a truce. The County of Orange has been ground zero for county pension reform, and there’s no reason its cities shouldn’t have the same designation. Leece could bring her frontline experiences to party leaders and council members in other cities.

“It is easy for outsiders to generalize and say don’t do this or do this, and it’s not enough money,” Leece said, “but they have not been part of the process, and they will not have to suffer the effects of impasse.”

Instead of making Leece an unlikely Republican pariah, wouldn’t it be better if GOP leaders worked with her to devise a practical strategy to roll back public safety compensation packages to levels that could actually be funded over the long-term?

If it would help, I’ll pick up the tab for a breakfast with Leece and two of her most estranged former allies, Supervisor John Moorlach and local GOP chief Scott Baugh. We can do it at Mimi’s, despite the fact that none of us is older than 90.

Leece has already agreed.

John? Scott?

WILLIAM LOBDELL is former editor of the Daily Pilot, former Los Angeles Times reporter and editor, and a Costa Mesa resident. The column runs Tuesday and Friday. His e-mail is williamlobdell@gmail.com.