Monday, January 24, 2011

Brown is faking his way through pension reform

There’s a huge difference between including something in a campaign website and including it in a budget. Marcia Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility said

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner:
For instance, she suggested that the administration change the way Cal Fire wants to include planned overtime as part of its pensionable benefit package. CalPERS is about to retroactively increase these pension benefits — and Brown could easily stop this. The prison guards, whose members can retire at age 50 with large pensions, also receive an additional 401(k) program, which could easily be stopped. Fritz also pointed to a loophole that allows public school teachers who work part time through job sharing to earn full retirement credit for their time. She also suggested changes to the state’s absurd airtime purchases, whereby public employees can pay for enhanced retirement benefits at about 50 cents on the dollar. “Not a single one made it into his budget,” she said. “He didn’t try very hard.”
Fritz also noted that Brown’s education funding plan doesn’t even mention that the California State Teachers Retirement System, in changing its actuarial rate assumption from 8 percent to 7.7 percent, has doubled its pension liability. The state is vastly underfunding teacher pensions, and contributions need to go up — but Brown avoided the issue, by pretending in his budget that the system is funded adequately. That’s a $4 billion issue.

From Paul Ryan to Cuomo to Brown, faking it, protecting their little area of socialism.

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