President's Message
The Fight of Our Lives
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| CPF President Lou Paulson |
As firefighters, we spend a lot of time responding to disasters. Whether it's a major wildland fire or a single medical response, firefighters are almost always first on scene ... first on the front lines.
With so much time spent at flesh-and-blood disasters, the notion that a single political campaign could produce something so cataclysmic may seem somewhat trivial. It's not. There's a disaster looming in the lives of every front line firefighter if Californians and their elected officials make the wrong choices in 2010.
Local Government on the Attack
Nobody knows more than firefighters how bad it's gotten at the local level. The ripples from our national economic meltdown are hitting local budgets with full force.
In many areas, your local unions are successfully collaborating with their elected officials on solutions that have averted budget cuts. But in other areas, management is turning its back on employees and the citizens, imposing devastating service cuts while trying to paint firefighters as "the bad guys."
To add insult to injury, our "friends" at the League of California Cities have qualified an initiative that, if successful, locks in cities' ability to do as they please with vast sums of redevelopment dollars. That will mean even less money for fire services, especially in counties and special districts.
Gridlock in Sacramento
As of this writing, California's state budget is mired in a seemingly immovable deadlock. Governor Schwarzenegger and GOP lawmakers won't vote for a budget that doesn't roll back retirement security for firefighters and other public workers. Democrats won't vote for a budget that carves too deeply into school funding and other vital services (like fire and law enforcement).
Thanks to "ballot box budgeting," there's no such thing as "majority rule" in Sacramento. That means pretty much everything needs a two-thirds majority. Lawmakers and the governor are already talking about "kicking the can" to the next governor.
Why It's Different This Time
If you were around during the 2005 pension and initiative fight, you remember a lot of the same attacks. But I'm here to tell you that it's worse this time.
The reason: Meg Whitman.
The billionaire ex-CEO didn't vote for 28 years, but she's already spent nearly $100 million to become governor. The centerpiece of Whitman's candidacy is a direct attack on you, me and every other public employee in California. And if that's not enough to give you the "willies", her campaign chair is former Gov. Pete Wilson, whose entire political career was built around attacking public employees ... especially those in public safety.
No matter how she may soft sell her views for you, Meg Whitman is Pete Wilson with a billion dollar bank account. And that's bad for firefighters.
What We're Doing ... And What You Can Do
With so much at stake, we simply can't afford half measures ... even in hard times. We need to be "all in". Your brothers and sisters recognize this - that's why they initiated a resolution from the floor of the CPF Convention for a temporary dues increase to fight Whitman's attacks and elect the candidate with a documented history of supporting firefighters - former Gov. Jerry Brown.
In addition to the gubernatorial fight, CPF is also playing an active role in opposing the League of Cities' "Trojan Horse" initiative - Proposition 22 - and in passing essential budget reform and accountability measures. We're co-chairing a broad coalition of labor and good-government groups in opposing devastating pension cuts. And we remain active at the Capitol in the fight to preserve essential firefighter training and mutual aid funding.
These efforts can succeed, but only if we all play our parts. As front line firefighters, your role is simple: Get the facts, get involved and, most importantly, get to the ballot box.
As we learned in 2005, victory is often a matter of showing up. If we don't stand up to the bullies, we could lose more than just a seat at the table. We could lose decades of progress that has made California safer, and improved the lives of firefighters, their families and working Californians everywhere.
And that would be a disaster.