Tag: pension

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Cowards All Around

Scot Peterson, Parkland, police, pension, Broward County, Florida, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, guns, gun control, second amendment

Just-​retired Scot Peterson is a millionaire, thanks to the generous taxpayers of Broward County, Florida.

You know Peterson as the sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, who, instead of entering the building where the shooter was mowing down 17 unarmed students and teachers, protected himself by waiting outside.

Peterson claimed “he remained outside the school because he didn’t know where the gunfire was coming from,” noted BuzzFeed. But “[r]adio transmissions from the day of the shooting have since contradicted Peterson’s defense …”

Following the cowardly non-​performance of his duty, Peterson promptly retired and began drawing his pension. As the Sun Sentinel newspaper reported Tuesday, his monthly check is for $8,702.35 — an annual salary of $104,428.20.

Should the 55-​year-​old live to the age of 75, he’ll draw more than $2 million.

In fact, the cowardly Peterson is being further rewarded with a $2,550 annual raise — earning more in retirement than he was earning while actually working.

I use the word “earning” and the phrase “actually working” loosely.

Reacting to the news, the father of one of the murdered students called Peterson’s lavish pension “disgusting” and “outrageous.”

Recoil at the thought of this derelict policeman raking in such mega-​moolah during decades of retirement — but that isn’t the only outrage.

How can Broward County afford to pay even their bravest police officers millions of dollars in retirement?

They can’t … for much longer.

Regardless, elected officials dare not do anything about it. They fear incurring the wrath of public employee unions … and risking their own pension windfalls.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability folly government transparency local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Babylon Goes Broke

California, pension, crisis, canary, cage, coal mine, spending, taxes

A few Babylonian, er, California cities going bankrupt — Stockton, Vallejo, and Bell — should be seen as more than dead canaries in a coalminer’s care. 

Indeed, you don’t need special prophetic gifts to see the dangers posed by over-​promising cushy pensions to government workers. Californians are coming around. And the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, appears to be “calling for reductions in gold-​plated, unsustainable public-​sector pensions,” as Nick Gillespie informs us at Reason.

But statewide reforms will not be easy. The problem is huge, presenting grave costs. “Absent the ability to alter pensions, states and localities have to devote more and more of their taxes to simply covering the costs of retired workers,” Gillespie explains. “Worse still, they often raise taxes to cover rising costs, typically at the expense of providing basic services such as police and road maintenance.”

Yes, over-​promising defined-​benefit pension packages effectively distributes wealth away from basic government services and into the pockets of the people with whom politicians work most closely.

Unfortunately, the courts long ago decided that politicians’ promises to employees outweigh basic government duties. That is, the courts determined that “public-​sector employees at all levels of government had an inviolable right to the pension benefits that existed on the day they were hired.”

But the courts seem to be lightening up on this “California Rule,” and the governor has dared mention that, come “the next recession,” some headway might be possible.

No matter what you may think of this rather desperate hope, the writing is on the wall. And it is in red ink and numbers, not Babylonian.*

As America’s Babylon is finding out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And not “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”

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Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

A City in Need of CPR

Next Tuesday, Cincinnati voters will decide Issue 4, a charter amendment petitioned onto the ballot by a citizens’ group called Cincinnati for Pension Reform (CPR).

If passed, the initiative will put newly hired city employees into a 401(k)-style retirement program, while protecting the pensions of current city retirees and workers through annual audits, publicly reported results, and requiring the city to take steps to close any fund deficit.

The Queen City’s public pension system is in deep trouble. Even by the city’s rosy accounting, it’s only 61 percent funded, with a whopping unfunded liability of $862 million. Moody’s recently downgraded the city’s credit rating, specifically because of its pension liabilities.

Nonetheless, Issue 4 faces fierce opposition from a group “primarily funded” by government workers’ unions. “In just two weeks,” reports the Cincinnati Enquirer, “the committee raised $207,970 … It received contributions from only two individuals, totaling $750, including a $500 contribution from former acting Cincinnati city manager and current Dayton city manager Tim Riordan.”

Jeff Harmon, president of a union representing 850 city workers said, “This measure is going to lead to higher taxes and possible lawsuits for the city and would potentially bankrupt Cincinnati.”

Why would actually funding the promises the city has already made to workers “lead to higher taxes” or “bankrupt Cincinnati”?

Who would file those “possible lawsuits”? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is a polite way of saying: If you don’t vote the way we want, we’ll sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly too much government

A Dog-​Wagging Tale

In California and Rhode Island (to name just two states) cities are going bankrupt … or closing libraries and parks and cutting police and firemen to forestall going belly up. Meanwhile, they continue paying huge sums in employment benefits for folks who used to work at city hall, but have since retired into the politicians’ promised land.

Bankrupt cities don’t do so well at paying out those promises, though.

That’s why even many union members in San Jose and San Diego, California, supported the victorious citizen initiatives earlier this year that created a reasonable and workable pension program, and why serious pension reform passed through the legislature and was signed into law in deep-​blue, heavily unionized Rhode Island.

In Los Angeles, former Mayor Richard Riordan’s Save Los Angeles campaign has worked mightily to prevent the city’s three pension systems from hitting the outrageous and piggy-​bank breaking annual cost of $2 billion by 2017. Unfortunately, Riordan’s group abandoned a petition drive to place a reform measure similar to San Diego’s and San Jose’s on the Los Angeles ballot next Spring. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721 claimed credit for blocking the initiative, claiming they convinced thousands of petition signers to withdraw their signatures.

Now, the Los Angeles Daily News reports that, “With no pension ballot initiative to fight, the unions can re-​focus their energy and their money on the races for mayor, controller, city attorney and the City Council.”

“We are more freed up now,” said an anonymous union official.

And likely to have even more influence on how the city will be run and financed and managed.

Or should I say, “mis-​managed”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly

Pension Reforms Un-Ravel?

Jerry Brown has done some good work as California’s governor. When he promised to take on the common practice of pension double-​dipping, he spotted a problem and appeared to be on the right track.

But if you want to hire well-​connected, experienced and (therefore, or presumably, competent) civil servants to help you in your crusade to save your state, what do you do?

Why, you hire retired civil servants. They each get their salaries — plus their pensions.

There may be something faulty in the above rationale. But that’s what happened. 

Shane Goldmacher and Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times showed just how big this problem is, in a current exposé. They lead with the facts in the case of Ann Ravel, who “gets a paycheck from her salary as chairwoman of California’s ethics watchdog agency and a second, bigger check from her public pension as a retiree.” She makes a good living, since the two sources of income “total more than $305,000 a year.” 

This is not a good policy. Marcia Fritz, president of California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, says such double dipping “violates the whole premise of having a retirement program.”

I see her point.

Still, it wouldn’t be an issue if pensioners received retirement payments not in amounts promised by politicians and guaranteed by taxpayers, but instead coming from actual investments — defined contributions, not defined benefits — in something like each one’s individual 401(k).

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly

Pension Problems

BP finally managed to place a cap on its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bristol Palin — that other “BP” in the news — is engaged to be married.

And the new iPhone’s antenna problems can be fixed by holding it in a special, dainty way — or by adding on a plastic holder.

So, with popular news stories wrapping up, can we now get back to fixing the political mess we’re in?

With the Republicans now said to be divided on whether to actually produce a game plan to fix up the fix we’re in, you can see how all the old perversities of politics still remain in full play at the federal level.

But look closer to home. There’s a lot to fix there. 

Throughout the country, politicians have made all sorts of bad deals with public employee unions regarding pay and pensions. They love to spend our money buying their votes. In cities like San Diego, the invested pension funds’ values have plummeted, making renegotiations necessary, and necessarily painful. Your town may be next.

Simple solution? We need constitutional amendments preventing politicians from promising pension pay-​outs of any amount. The only kind of pension governments should be allowed to offer is the placement of a negotiated amount of funds in a retirement account to be managed by the employee or the employee’s assigns.

Taxpayers must not be held in hock to the unfulfillable promises of a previous set of politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.