The average American worker pays 27% of the cost of employee-sponsored healthcare.
Look, city employees aren't the bad guys here. They show up on time, punch out at the end of the day and go home with the deals their union bosses won for them by muscling the politicians.
But among the main contenders, only Perry is adamant about saying the vast bulk of the city budget is tied up in employee and retiree costs, so there's no way forward without employees making more concessions.
(I'd argue that giveaways to corporate donors — like the deals Perry has helped engineer for the billionaire owner of L.A. Live — are also worth a harder look. About $35 million was spent on lobbying last year at City Hall, where everyone knows that if you want to play, sometimes you've got to pay.)
In the final three weeks of the primary, you can expect the candidates to keep ganging up on Greuel, and asking whether public employee unions would be throwing money at her if they thought she'd ever drive a hard bargain.
"Everything is on the table," Greuel has now said approximately 12,000 times in the campaign.
Is there a sharp knife on the table, so I can stab myself the next time she says it?
Greuel said she wants to go after double-dipping, spiking and pensions for convicts. Crowd pleasers, for sure. But nickels and dimes in the grand scheme.
Beutner said he's got a friend who's a firefighter in his 50s "who could retire tomorrow at 120 grand for life. Tell me how that works."
It doesn't.
Nor does Greuel's most preposterous claim of the week. Budget deficits be damned, she said she's going to hire 2,000 more cops and hundreds more firefighters.
It was not clear how she would pay for them.
I think we can assume that everything's on the table.
