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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| A million-dollar public pension roils California |
| 2010-07-31 |
| After the Los Angeles Times reported that the blue-collar suburb of Bell, Calif., was paying its city manager Robert Rizzo $787,637 a year — with 12 percent annual pay increases — a crowd of indignant Bell residents waited almost eight hours outside the city council meeting last Thursday. At midnight it was announced that Rizzo, along with Police Chief Randy Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, were resigning without severance. The combined annual salary of these three highest-paid Bell employees was $1,620,925 in a city where one in six lives in poverty, property taxes are higher than Beverly Hills, and debt held by the city quadrupled between 2004 and 2009. To say the citizens of Bell weren't getting the management they were paying for would be a gross understatement. Despite two corruption investigations of the city, taxpayers are still on the hook for Bell's obscenely overpaid officials. The likely reason why Rizzo, Adams and Spaccia resigned so readily is that they are eligible for public pensions. Under current formulations, Adams will make $411,000 annually in retirement, and Spaccia could make as much as $250,000 when she's eligible for retirement in four years at age 55. Rizzo, who was arrested in March for driving over his neighbor's mailbox with a blood alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit, is set to become the highest paid public official in California's retiree system. He will collect more than $650,000 annually. Six years from now, when Rizzo turns 62 and starts collecting Social Security, his annual benefit rises to $976,771. When he turns 64, it tops $1 million, and if he lives to 83, he'll be pulling in $1.48 million a year — and again, all of this largesse is courtesy of state taxpayers. California is but one of many states on the brink of fiscal ruin largely due to outrageous public employee benefits. Some 9,111 Californians have six-figure public pensions, as do thousands more public employees in other states. Maybe these retirees won't get a million a year like Rizzo, but they are, in effect, taxpayer-funded millionaires. Fortunately, there are signs that taxpayers are fed up with this state of affairs. Last week, the governor of Missouri signed a law requiring new state employees to contribute 4 percent of their pay to their retirement plan. The Show Me State is showing California and the rest of the country a path to public pension reform. In other news, the citizens of Bell, California have introduced legislation to bring back lynch mobs... A simple law capping pensions to a certain maximum is all they need. Public jobs used to be low pay with a sweet pension and good job security. Now it's high pay, absolute job security and a bigger pension. Cap the pensions, and don't let sick time, etc count for calculating a pension. No sane politician can oppose that publicly. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #19 Colorado public employees pay into the state retirement system and make adjustments to keep it solvent. This happened this year. Not all public retirement systems are screwed up. |
| Posted by: Sonny Hupotle6750 2010-07-31 18:33 |
| #18 Quite frankly, if only 1% of the city's voters bothered to turn out for the election, and few if any of them studied the issue to find out precisely what they were voting for....they got pretty much what they deserve. It's not like it was passed at some super secret, inconveniently timed city council meeting. Now...the rest of us should take note and make sure the same situation doesn't happen in our hometowns and/or states. (BTW, Steve....I wouldn't doubt that Obama's home state has a plan like that. It's probably the elected officials one if it exists....go figure, right? ;) ) |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie 2010-07-31 17:02 |
| #17 How the Bell city council ripped off its taxpayers (LA Times). They basically set up a special election to modify their form of government & excepted Bell from the statewide limitation on such shenanigans. Less than 1% of the city's population voted for the change. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-31 13:55 |
| #16 Many of us took big hits in our personal retirement when the economy fell apart in 2008. I'm talking about monies that were earned by the sweat of our brow and put into investment accounts. It has been overdue for public pensions to experience the same hits. California unions have resisted much of the proposed legislation which would rein in the high salaries and pensions in public jobs. The taxpayers are footing the bill for public employees to live opulent life styles and have posh retirements. Many of these taxpayers are about tapped out. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-07-31 13:41 |
| #15 In the US as a whole the public pension gap is a TRILLION dollars. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-31 13:33 |
| #14 Defined benefit (DB) pensions supported by taxes are the issue. AFAICT such DB pensions are what military pensions are & have been for centuries. DB pensions may or may not involve employee contributions. But to say that the average guy or gal working in your least favorite guvmint office never contributed a dime towards their own plan is complete and total bullshit. I never implied that. What the employees have contributed is their property, IMO, and is properly a separate issue. DB pensions promised & backed by governments are otherwise an obligation of the government (i.e., paid for by taxes if all else fails). Other DB pension plans (i.e. those not supported solely by taxes) always hinge on accurate predictions of future economic growth & future investment returns, predictions which have proven unreliable. Besides the need to predict the future, DB plans of private companies also depend on the continued existence of the company or its pension plan backers, &/or whether the government has volunteered to bail out the plans if all else fails, see PBGC. Private employers have by and large discontinued DB pension plans for the vast majority of employees except for their most privileged class, CEO's, etc. Otherwise private DB pension plans are unfeasible. I do not see why tax-backed public DB pension plans should continue either, excepting the military (a tradition going back centuries). Social security is a modified DB pension plan. It also involves employee contributions. The level of future benefits paid and eligibility for same are not established by contracts, such as those that apply to the 3 highest-paid Bell employees. I don't know of any law forbidding the gov't from slashing social security payments to a trivial level and raising the bar of eligibility very high. This will likely happen if the US economy continues to stink over the next 30 years. that's what happens when people don't bother to pay any attention to their local governments, and the media basically gives them a free ride Government-backed DB pension plans are also moderately complicated taxation and economic issues which cannot be handled with sound bites and political slogans. Tax-backed DB pension plans are a piece of the puzzle. The larger issue is how the electorate is to plan & pay for its own retirement. A century ago very few lived long enough to worry about a retirement. During the last century longevity has increased while the US economy grew so rapidly all sorts of extravagant spending plans were developed & planners were pleased to think this gravy train would continue indefinitely. 70% of the US economy depends on consumer spending. If Americans really took responsible for their own retirements & saved accordingly, the resulting economy would scarcely be recognizable. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-31 13:25 |
| #13 I'll stand by my comment. Cap the total amount of a pension someone can have. That way the average workers in public service will be treated fairly, and people like Mr. Rizzo won't be able to scam the system. Blondie: I'm told that we have public pensions in Illinois structured so that workers do not contribute. I can't put my finger on a link but I'll work on it. LEO: In no way do I want to reduce pensions for average public workers who contribute to the system and who have done their jobs. The key here is to ensure that the wolves and scam-artists can't enrich themselves the way Mr. Rizzo has. It would help if the press and the public were more engaged in state and local affairs. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2010-07-31 10:31 |
| #12 Simple solution: structure the retirement like the military. , except wiht later collection eligibility, and keep the military limits. Rate job equivalent to a GS and transfer that over to military rank, and there's the pension amount. NO more million dollar a year pensions. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-07-31 09:29 |
| #11 All such caps need to be amended into the state constitutions. Now tell me why should any public employee draw more than 50% of what the average taxpayer, not the per capita, of the state makes? The incentive of any public servant would seem to be to make the average taxpayer's income rise to raise their own long term benefit. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-07-31 08:53 |
| #10 There should be a lifetime cap on payouts, and things like Rizzo's future paycheck should never have happened. But that's what happens when people don't bother to pay any attention to their local governments, and the media basically gives them a free ride by focusing on Lindsay Lohan's lack of skivvies. Yep! Bread and Circuses. LOOK...OVER THERE...Brittany's SNAAAAAAATCH!!!!!!!eleventy! |
| Posted by: Secret Asian Man 2010-07-31 07:23 |
| #9 AH, exactly what public pension are you talking about that requires no contribution from the employee? Because I worked as a benefits advisor for a state pension plan, and I never heard of one that worked that way. There are plenty of plans that had totally unrealistic investment plans and/or actuaries. Lots of them didn't deduct enough from employee checks because they thought the stock market returns that we saw in the 90's and early 00's would be there forever. There are also some plans that had overly generous payouts programmed in from the start (elected official retirement plans come to mind). But to say that the average guy or gal working in your least favorite guvmint office never contributed a dime towards their own plan is complete and total bullshit. (Yes, that's a technical financial term, but I'm sure you all know what it means.) And before anyone here pipes up with the old favorite "well then....if you want your public pension, you better give up your social security" argument.....guess what? Most public employees, with the exception of law enforcement and firefighters, ALSO pay into social security like the rest of you do. So, do the math. At the end of my employment with the pension fund, I was involuntarily contributing 8% to the pension fund....involuntarily contributing 8% to social security.....and then there was 10% to my deferred comp. (No employer match for that, BTW, like many of you have with your 401k's. That amount was voluntary, though.) Some years I even squeezed it further and made a contribution to a Roth if I skipped going to restaurants and movies. Yes, I'll (probably) have a nicer retirement payout than someone who worked at a comparable salary in the private sector. Gee....wonder why? There should be a lifetime cap on payouts, and things like Rizzo's future paycheck should never have happened. But that's what happens when people don't bother to pay any attention to their local governments, and the media basically gives them a free ride by focusing on Lindsay Lohan's lack of skivvies. |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie 2010-07-31 06:19 |
| #8 I know evry one is upset about public pension stories, but only the spikers and top managers get that kind of payment. I was an LEO for 27 years and 6 years active military prior to that. At 52 I was hit by a car while working a crash and my left knee was wrecked. Two surgerys and 9 months later I was forced to retire. If your over 50 no desk job for you. I paid 8% of my gross into my pension every month and no, I do not and never will see SSI - they reduce it dollar for dollar to your public pension. The retirement pays the bills but I'm not getting rich. Let the attacks begin. Signed a real public servant |
| Posted by: retired LEO 2010-07-31 04:02 |
| #7 Crazy fool .. 100% doesn't recover the monies il-got. make it 150% |
| Posted by: 3dc 2010-07-31 02:29 |
| #6 Sounds like they need to tax those pensions at 100%. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2010-07-31 01:15 |
| #5 I agree. Just don't get impatient and expect to see progress overnight. Any return on the changes that will implemented won't really be seen until this current generation of public employees is retired, dead and gone. Unless, of course, the public entity responsible for these pensions goes belly up which is a far more distinct possibility. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-07-31 01:13 |
| #4 #3 - we have to start somewhere. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-31 01:05 |
| #3 Plus they'll grandfather it. Anybody from here back, it's status quo. Fight it in court and they'll wave their legally binding contracts and you'll lose. Granted the new hires will have to abide by it, so in about 20 years maybe you start to get a handle on things. They've done it here in Mass. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-07-31 00:22 |
| #2 The only publicly financed pensions should be for retired military. No other public employees should have them, they can save for their retirement like the rest of us do (or don't). If prospective public employees don't like that, they are always free to seek employment elsewhere. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-31 00:20 |
| #1 No sane politician can oppose that publicly. Don't bet on it. Any "good" politician can turn that problem around so that it looks like they are being screwed if they have their pensions cut or even capped. And by a good politician, I don't mean someone who is morally good, just that they are very effective at being politicians. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2010-07-31 00:16 |