Citing pension costs, Costa Mesa, Calif., plans to lay off nearly half its employees

“What angers a lot of us is that we’re being blamed for the economic situation,” said Jason Pyle, 38, a fire department captain who earned $160,000 in base, overtime and certification pay in 2010, according to city records. Pyle, who has been with the department for 14 years, could retire at age 54 with 90 percent of his base salary and some other forms of pay. “They’re marginalizing what we actually do — like everything I’ve done in my life now has no meaning.”

He called the city’s approach to the problem — the layoff notices — “a scorched-earth policy.”

Indeed, in few places has the rhetoric over the unions and the “ticking pension bomb” been as strident as it is in California — or, more specifically, this coastal bastion of conservatism where the battle erupted most clearly during Righeimer’s fall campaign.

Righeimer, 52, an Orange County developer, has long fought against unions. In the mid-1990s, after forming a political action group, he ran afoul of teachers unions while pushing for vouchers and a back-to-basics approach to education. Then, in 1997, he pushed a ballot measure to prohibit labor unions from using their members’ dues for political purposes without the permission of each member, each year.

Not surprisingly, when he declared his intention to run for City Council in this city of 116,000, he blamed the city’s budget shortfalls on the union-negotiated compensation for police, firefighters and other city employees.

In his view, governments have been too generous with public employee unions that have wide influence over local elections.

First, he and other critics note, the unions can be a major source of funding in local races. Righeimer’s campaign spent $70,000 for the November election, according to city records; the Costa Mesa police and fire unions, meanwhile, spent $101,000 in a campaign to discredit him. (Righeimer won the post of mayor pro tem, similar to a vice mayor.)

Second, he notes, many candidates compete to win the endorsement of police and firefighters.

“Everyone wants to get their endorsement,” he said. “They fight crime, save people’s lives, all these good things. The people really go for that.”

The unions note that their candidates have frequently lost. But when it comes to gaining richer pension benefits, they have often won.

After the state allowed richer pensions for many workers in 1999, many localities, including Costa Mesa, quickly followed suit. Today, police and firefighters in the city can retire at 50 with as much as 90 percent of their base salary and some other forms of pay. It was, in part, the tenor of the times, some said.

“After 9/11 happened, they were national heroes,” said Scott Baugh, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County and a Righeimer ally. “Wouldn’t it be great to give a million dollars to every hero? It would be, but it is really unsustainable.”

Earlier this year, a bipartisan commission looking into pensions in California warned that “the retirement promises that elected officials made to public employees over the last decade are not affordable. . . . Pension costs will crush government.”