AC Transit’s announcement of its decision to outsource its call center to New England brings up the same question for Oakland.  Oakland is forbidden by its charter from outsourcing anything except certain professional type services and big construction projects.
Walnut Creek , and many other smaller East Bay cities, do not have such restrictions. It recently laid off its entire street cleaning staff - except for one manager - and outsourced to an East Bay, locally-owned company with union employees. Walnut Creek will save 40 percent off its normal operating costs plus save the cost of very expensive street sweeping machines.

I don't think it's necessary or desirable to do that if city unions are given a chance to voluntarily lower the cost of using their union members - for example, keeping salaries unchanged, but greatly reducing retirement benefits.

A small group of residents are working on proposing such a charter amendment. Tentatively, it would allow outsourcing public security functions to other government entities only, to the county for fire services.

Tentatively, the amendment also would prohibit binding arbitration for police and fire, which effectively forces Oakland to overpay its cops and  firefighters because many of the other Bay Area cities do also.

It will be very costly to get the signatures and pay attorneys. SEIU and the cops and firefighters unions will all fight back.

Elected officials all depend on these unions for "volunteers" at election time to go door to door, staff phone banks, stuff envelopes, etc. Jean Quan has the SEIU endorsement. Perata has the OPOA endorsement. Kaplan has previously received the endorsement of Alameda Labor Council. Not clear where her loyalties and political debts lay now.

Privatization is not a panacea and has risks of its own (i.e. corruption in awarding contracts). But used as leverage in labor negotiations, and combined with the public records transparency reforms proposed by the League of Woman Voters (actually, it’s state law), privatization could enable the city to greatly reduce vested retirement benefits that will bankrupt us without an unlikely federal bailout.

If we can reduce city payroll and benefit costs, we can  provide more and better services to all residents by using the savings to hire more employees, pay for more outsourced services and fund effective tested social programs.

Without such changes, in a few years, the pension and unfunded medical retirement benefits are going to come home to roost.

Most of the city's tax revenues, general fund and restricted funds, will have to go to service bonds and pay for the retirements of baby boomer employees.

If I were a younger Oakland resident, I would be really PO’d that not only am I not going to get the good jobs many baby boomers got, have to work longer and pay more for social security, pay higher sales and parcel taxes, but do without basic city services so that baby boomer city employees can get very nice pensions - and have pensions that are much higher than state or federal employees ever got, let alone private sector 401k’d employees.

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