Cost of administering Measures A and B much less than some predicted

January 10, 2011

Shasta County, California: In the lead-up to the November 2, 2010 vote in Shasta County on pension-reform propositions Measure A and Measure B, opponents of the attempts to rein in the city's cost of public employee pensions and retirement benefits claimed that it would cost $50,000 just to administer the elections on the two measures.

However, when the actual costs were tallied, the cost of administering each election was about $5,300, or a total of $10,600 for both measures; about 20% of what opponents estimated during the campaign.

According to Bruce Ross, the editorial page editor for the Redding Record-Searchlight:

"Cathy Darling, the Shasta County clerk and elections chief, had long said that the measures would probably cost less than the $25,000 apiece figure that somehow came to dominate the political debate. At the same time, she declined to nail down a specific number until the total election costs were tallied and divided up among the various entities holding elections.

Well, she's done so now. And she informs me the total cost to the city for both measures was $10,676.76 --- roughly one-fifth of the sum the councilors were supposedly wasting."

See also

• City of Redding Pension Funding, Measure A (November 2010)
• Redding City Retiree Health Insurance Premiums, Measure B (November 2010)
• Local labor, California, 2010