What goes up must come down applies to all things physical, but not in the world of government finance where taxes and spending have been immune to the law of gravity for as long as anyone can remember.

It’s one thing for local politicos to ignore options to lower taxes when the economy is in the tank; still another to try to raise taxes in periods of economic decline. But that’s exactly what a coalition of San Diego civic leaders and organized labor is trying to do with a measure that’s on next month’s ballot.

First, let’s look at the local economic climate in which a sales tax hike is being proposed. A recent news story reported that San Diego household incomes in the private sector dropped 5.9 percent from 2007 to 2009, bringing incomes to where they were a decade ago—at the end of the last millennium. The drop grew worse this year with the 2007-10 decline now at 6.8 percent.

In the real world, companies struggle just to survive by closing offices and facilities and laying off workers on a scale not seen in decades. Nobody’s talking about raises for private sector employees or most business owners. Keeping one’s job or business intact has become the Christmas bonus of the 21st Century thus far.

Not so, however, with our friends in the public sector; in particular, those who work for the City of San Diego. Public employee unions not only have fortified job security at all costs but have been able to achieve pension and other benefits for city workers that stagger the imagination of those of us who toil daily in the real world to pay for these gluttonous perks.

While the private economy has sustained sharp declines in business revenues and personal income, local government spending has continued to grow on average six to seven percent a year—compounded. Municipal employee compensation accounts for most of that growth and the City of San Diego needs more money to feed a growing number of benefits-hungry pensioners who have retired at incomes several times higher than those of their private sector counterparts. Somebody has to feed the 8,000-pound pension gorilla that squats in City Hall.

That’s the real purpose behind Proposition D, a ballot measure that would implement a “temporary” half-cent sales tax hike once a handful of cost-cutting measures and downsizing are enacted.

I’m all for Prop D’s cost-cutting measures but it’s like emptying the ashtrays in an airplane to help it stay airborne, compared to the real cost issue. We should be more concerned about the outrageous pension conditions that to date are untouched by this or any other reform measure.

City Councilmember Carl DeMaio recently listed several findings from a California Foundation for Pension Reform report on just some of the local pension abuses. Hang onto your mortgaged hats; this gets a little rough.

Some city retirees receive up to four separate retirement benefits, including the standard defined benefit pay, Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) annuity payments, 401(k)-style payouts, and the preservation of benefits. Many city pensioners have accumulated million dollar cash balances under the DROP program alone.

Several others earn more in retirement than their successors who are holding the same job. The city’s former head librarian currently receives $227,000 and change a year in retirement while the current position calls for $139,680 in salary.

A long list of city retirees earn six-figure pension payments, capped by the top retiree who collects a whopping $299,103 year—not including payments under the Supplemental Pension Savings Plan retirement program.

Then there are the “early risers,” chiefly city politicians who are receiving retirement pay as young as 35 and 39 with some “waiting” to collect in their 40s.

If you’re trying to rationalize this with the notion that at least pensioners are spending their retirement pay in the City of San Diego, think again. Under the “cash to dash” approach, only 38 percent of the city’s retirees live in the city.

Look, I’m all for competitive salaries and benefits, but paying 34 percent more for government workers over those who perform the same work in the private sector is just plain wrong. We need to break the city’s addiction to excessive spending, beginning with rejecting the Proposition D sales tax hike so that reasonable pension reform and other cost-cutting measures become the only options available to balance the city’s budget.

Halloween comes at month’s end, but it seems as if taxpayers have already been tricked without being treated.