Dan Walters
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013 – 12:00 am
Public employee union propaganda notwithstanding, California has a serious public pension problem.
Or, more precisely, cities and some fire districts have a pension problem because they spend so much of their budgets on highly paid, high-pension police and firefighters.
Pension obligations are consuming ever-larger portions of those budgets, squeezing out money for other services. Payments into the state’s public pension fund played central roles in the bankruptcy of three cities and the one that has emerged from bankruptcy, Vallejo, is already back in distress.
Cities are in this pickle because of a perfect storm of shortsighted decisions.
Fourteen years ago, at the behest of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and unions, then-Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature sharply increased state pension benefits, relying on CalPERS’ assertions that strong investment earnings would pay for them without additional money from taxpayers.
Throughout the state, local government officials in thrall to their unions followed suit. But CalPERS’ assurances turned to dust when its relatively risky real estate and equity investments turned sour, costing tens of billions of dollars.
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Reduce the pay benefits and pensions of all police and fire. They are way overpaid, overbenefitted and overpensioned considering they only require a high school education and that every job opening brings thousands of applicants! The taxpayers cant support these high paid blue collar workers.
You might be in for a surprise at how much college a typical cop or fireman has today. The days of joining up right out of high school are gone.
Cut away former Undersheriff Richard Beemers $291k a year pension. That guy isn’t worth $100k a year. He robbed us like all the other officials in this county. Your high pensions go to the freakin crooks, not the working class.
Get rid of all the paramedics, let the ambulances staff them and pay for them with medical insurance. Don’t staff county jails with SO except for brief training stints to learn dirtbag code. And as Anon so aptly put it, cut the bloated administrations of every agency out there.