A lawsuit would limit the information on the website of a pension reform group, preventing the listing of names such as Bruce Malkenhorst, a city of Vernon retiree with a $499,675 annual pension.
The suit filed by a retired Contra Costa Deputy Sheriff, Donna Irwin, would allow the disclosure of the amounts of individual public employee pensions. But the recipient could not be named.
Of course, an Internet search might quickly narrow the field in the case of Vernon. Some stories say the sparsely populated industrial city near Los Angeles has been run by just two families, the Malkenhorsts and the Malburgs.
The website, californiapensionreform.com, has a searchable database with the names of more than 5,000 persons receiving pensions of $100,000 or more through the California Public Employees Retirement System.
The site also has a listing of the “$100,000 club” at the California State Teachers Retirement System. And the retirement systems for judges and University of California employees are cooperating.
But the response to requests for similar pension information from the 20 county retirement systems operating under a 1937 act is said to be mixed, ranging from cooperation to notifying retirees about the request.
“The obviously important principle is the public knowing where their tax money is being spent,” said Keith Richman, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, the operator of the website.
Richman, a former Republican assemblyman from Northridge, is hiring a lawyer, Timothy Biddle of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. A lawyer in a suit resulting in a ruling requiring disclosure of names and salaries of public employees has offered aid.
“We are getting a lot of response from all over the country,” Richman said of the website. “Numerous reporters have contacted us. Our web page is getting more hits than ever. It’s clearly gained people’s attention and contributed to the education of the public about this problem.”
Richman contends that “extravagant” public employee pensions are eating up too much of state and local government budgets, diverting funds from other programs. The foundation is working on an initiative that would reduce pension costs for future hires.
An attorney representing Irwin, the retired deputy sheriff, said there have been two court rulings on the disclosure of salaries and other information about state and local government employees.
“Neither one of those cases addressed the issue of retiree benefits,” said Matt Guichard, an attorney in Concord.
Guichard said the retirees have a basic right to privacy. He said there is a question about whether pension payments are “public money” because retirees, when working, contributed to their retirement fund.
Moreover, said Guichard, retirement benefits are protected by law and cannot be changed. He said any change in benefits for future employees that might result from disclosure can be accomplished with the pension amounts, without revealing names.
“Someone who is retired and lives in Tennessee, Possum Holler — what benefit is there to releasing that person’s name?” he said.
Guichard reacted strongly to a question about whether he has been retained by public employee unions.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Donna Irwin is my only client. I am doing it on behalf of all similarly retired people, not labor unions.”
A state Supreme Court decision in 2007 authorizing the disclosure of the names and salaries of public employees was the result of a suit by the Contra Costa Times to obtain Oakland police salaries.
Now a columnist for the newspaper, Daniel Borenstein, has spelled out how two fire chiefs were able to “spike” their pensions through vacation pay and other means, getting more money in retirement than they did on the job.
The San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District chief, Craig Bowen, retired last December at age 51 with an annual salary of about $221,000 a year. His annual pension is $284,000.
The Moraga Orinda Fire District chief, Peter Nowicki, turned a $185,000 annual salary into a $241,000 yearly pension at age 50. Then Nowicki went back to work for the district on a five-month contract at $176,000 a year, collected on top of his pension.
Borenstein said in a column last week that without their names, he could not have researched the Bowen and Nowicki cases. He said having the names also showed that the two officials had key roles in salary and benefit negotiations from which they benefited.
“The public has a right to that information and can only make the connection if the names are made public,” Borenstein wrote. “Government employees should not expect to hide behind anonymity.”
The Internet and computer databases are opening many government doors. Broad comparisons of pension and health benefits in cities and counties nationwide can be searched at a website launched last month.
But unlike the website aimed at building public support for pension reform, the “Government Benefits Comparison Tool” is intended to help government officials set benefit levels.
“We know that health insurance and retirement benefits are important in recruiting and retaining talented workers,” said a news release quoting Elizabeth Kellar, president of the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, which operates the website with the Government Finance Officers Association.
The Sacramento Bee put a database on its website last year that allows state worker salaries to be searched by name, drawing a protest at the newspaper’s building by a public employees union.
The Service Employees International Union Local 1000 said the database, among other things, jeopardized women who had switched jobs to hide from ex-husbands and boyfriends, some with restraining orders.
Bee reporters John Hill and Dorothy Korber created their own database as they pursued a tip that California Highway Patrol officials were “spiking” their pensions by claiming injuries shortly before retirement, which some called “chief’s disease.”
The Bee reported in 2004 that one of the injuries claimed by the top CHP official, Commisioner Dwight “Spike” Helmick, was caused by falling out of his office chair — prompting “he didn’t buckle up” and other jokes at the Capitol.
Still, the reform group’s database shows Helmick, the state’s top cop, with an annual pension of $150,432, well below the suburban fire chiefs with pensions of $241,000 and $284,000.
Reporter Ed Mendel covered the Capitol in Sacramento for nearly three decades, most recently for the San Diego Union-Tribune. More stories are at https://calpensions.com/ Posted 11 Jun 09
Calpensions 
June 11, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Why do you need names? That is irrelevant. It’s simply the fact or the level of benefits that is being questioned. What good does it serve to invade these folks’ private lives? Is there something else we’re looking for?
June 11, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I honestly do NOT understand why the pensioners are being named or demonized. I think the pensions are outrageous. I’m a career firefighter in the Dallas metroplex and after 25 years as a paid, career firefighter I will retire making about $65000.00 a year and my pension will be about $3800 a month. If I work 5 more years, my pension will be about what I earn annually, a little over $5000 a month.
The problem I have is that the VAST MAJORITY of public employees have NO SAY over what their pensions will be. I took my job knowing that I would never get rich. I also knew that SOMEONE here before me had set up the benefits and I had zero say in how that was set up or how it is administered. When I went to church and played ball with guys that made twice and three times what I do in the Telecom Corridor here in NE Texas, I knew I was never going to make that kind of money. But now that the companies that are left here are dramatically downsized my income much more nearly reflects the prevailing wage here.
My understanding was that municipalities offer better pensions because they can’t compete on wages when the market is in an equilibrium. AND because after I give 30 years to this city, I’ll have had many opportunities to risk my life and health, and the residual effect of my career stands to leave me with a MUCH SHORTER expected lifespan. I’ve been to the funerals of dozens of retired firefighters in their 50’s and early 60’s (and VERY VERY few in their 70’s and 80’s) from my small department of less than 150 personnel.
My main point is that politicians and administrators have everything to do with my pension and I have zilch to do with it EXCEPT mandatory contributions. Oh, and my city is a Social Security city, too. So, I am paying into that bankrupt boondoggle right along with most everyone else. I’m 48 years old and will not receive anything LIKE what the SS statement quotes every year. So, unless the people that you’re wanting to name actually have some influence over the pension that they receive, I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want to exact a price by ‘outing’ them.
June 11, 2009 at 5:21 pm
When you’ve completed your work for a government agency and you’ve turned in your keys, expecting to be compensated highly just for breathing each day is an outrageous extravagance.
A $40,000 or $50,000 pension a year? Sure. That sounds reasonable. But a $100,000 or greater pension a year for former office workers? No doggone way. The older generations are destroying the future for the younger generations. It’s time to fight back and force retirees to trim their lifestyles to something more reasonable. If you’ve earned more than $100,000 a year in salary, then a $40,000 or $50,000 annual pension should be more than enough to cover your retirement expenses. Can’t live on that? Then, restructure your lifestyle. Downsize. Get a smaller residence. You already were paid way too much each year as a municipal non-public-safety employee. Making more as a retiree than hardworking people make on regular salary is utterly sinful. It must be stopped.
Retirees have no right to destroy the future of younger people when today’s rough economy was caused exclusively by the irresponsibility of that retired generation. Let’s start holding folks in their 60s and 70s and 80s responsible for the economic carnage they wrought. Take away their comfort. Take away their extravagance. This country no longer has the economic bandwidth to support decades of country club living for former desk workers and mid-level administrators.
June 11, 2009 at 6:17 pm
So let me get this straight…it’s ok for government to publish and criticize corporate pensions and bonuses but it’s quite another thing for the public to criticize government pensions?
June 11, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Not only should their names and pensions amounts be available on a website, there ought to be an annuity calculator there so that the citizens being forced to pay for the compensation of government employees can have the perspective of the kind of saving they would have to have to be able to retire as well as these people. As governments everywhere are whining about not having enough money to provide “services,” the reality of government employee economic privilege needs to be exposed. I’m only sorry it took long to the newsmedia to finally begin to report this.
June 11, 2009 at 6:40 pm
See reference the previous post on CalSTRS as well.
These 5000+ are receiving over half a billion dollars in pensions from underfunded pensions. One way or another, that shortfall is going to have to be made up out of the general fiund.
It adds up to real money.
June 11, 2009 at 6:53 pm
After 27 years as a public lawyer, I receive a pension of $70,000 a year. At the time of my retirement it was estimated that I had saved my government employer several millions by my representation.
The last job offer I received from the opposition was $200k plus. I was able to turn it down because of the pension. I earned the pension under the then terms of my employment and while I am grateful, I don’t owe anyone an apology.
The only reason for disclosing names of pensioners is to hold them up for vilification. After 27 years of public service, earning far less than my classmates, it’s hard to see that I, or others like me, deserve that.
June 11, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Do you know what the median college graduate over 25 years old earns? Right around $60,000.
So you (Dallas fireman), earned pretty much what other college grads earn, BUT you get to retire at 50 with a pension worth about $700K-$1M if it were paid out in a lump sum (invested & withdrawals made of around 4-5%). How many of your fellow college grads, 25 years ago, have the equivalent of $1M sitting in the bank? I bet not too many…in fact, we can just go to various sites (http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/11/median_net_wort.html) and determine that kind of net worth puts you near the top 10% of your age group.
You never planned to get rich working for the gov’t? Well, you did.
The California salaries put them into the top 10% easily for earnings. They should be expected, like the rest of people in that bracket, to pay for their own retirement. With that kind of salary (never mind car allowances and other perks), saving up a couple million should be their problems, not the taxpayers.
June 11, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Part of the problem mentioned in the article is that some of the recipients negotiated on both sides of the agreements. Ie, they were in charge of negotiating for the government when they were members of the union that was negotiating for the pensions. Since they stood to gain from a generous pension package, they didn’t drive a hard bargain. A classic conflict of interest.
June 11, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Ok, now that a few responders have offered their opinion, I can get the gist of how ignorant the responders here are. There is a difference between someone who establishes his own pay or his own pension, IE: Congress, and someone who has an offer made to him, not a conditional offer, a CONTRACTUAL offer. You can piss and moan all you want about the contracts that your public OFFICIALS OFFERED to public employees, but trying to embarrass someone because they played by the rules and agreed to give their lives in no matter WHAT capacity for what YOUR OWN REPRESENTATIVES put on the table for those employees.
Stupidity says that those people who AGREED TO WHAT WAS OFFERED should be shamed for accepting the terms that were offered.
June 11, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Oh, and David, I could care less how much the average college grad makes and it isn’t my fault that they don’t have a pension. I pay taxes too. I also work with a veterinarian, several business majors, engineering majors, one with an advanced degree, a broad variety of professionals who liked the benefits package that MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVES OFFERED as a contract for people who would agree to commit to a career with the city that I work for. So, don’t come flying at me with this bull about how much an average whatever makes.
Oh, and the PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA get to determine whether public employees have collective bargaining or binding arbitration. In Texas we don’t have that. I wonder who determines whether Texas or California has collective bargaining. I believe that is the PEOPLE of the individual states. So, if you want to put someone’s name on a list, why don’t you look in the mirror for the place to start throwing the stones. I have never asked for collective bargaining nor binding arbitration. I have been happy with my salary all along the way. Oh, and another thing, David, I’ll remind you that the average college graduate can leave his employer and remain in his own field and move laterally for the same or increased pay. I can’t do that. I have to begin at the bottom of a rigid pay ladder regardless of where I go and take a huge pay cut and work for years to move back up to the pay that I now make. Also, if you find that the economic situation in this world demands you work past 65, I’ll make you a deal, I’ll come do your job and you come do mine.
June 11, 2009 at 8:59 pm
> Oh, and another thing, David, I’ll remind you that the average college graduate can leave his employer and remain in his own field and move laterally for the same or increased pay. I can’t do that.
In CA, police and firepersons can do lateral moves between departments. If carrierpigeon’s union negotiated for strict seniority, that’s on him. If the unions for the places where he’d like to go negotiated for strict seniority, that’s on him too. (Strict seniority deals are designed to protect incumbents. If one place protects incumbents, others are smart to do likewise.)
BTW – Dallas Texas Fire department does do lateral hires – see http://www.dallascityhall.com/meetings/civil_service_board/csb_minutes_030507.pdf .
June 11, 2009 at 9:12 pm
The names are released because it is a government expenditure. We are citizens. We have a right to whom and in what amount the government is spending our money. If you are a public employee, your salary and benefits (including retirement payments) are public information. Full stop.
June 11, 2009 at 11:11 pm
So what do you want to do once you have the names?? Want to go stand outside their door with lanterns and pitchforks demanding they give back their pension? Do we hang them in public? What do we do with those name once we have them? There’s nothing wrong with wanting reform in the level of benefits, just don’t blame those who played by the rules during their career…
June 11, 2009 at 11:31 pm
You are the vampires who have sucked California dry. Try to blame Prop 13 all you want, but the real cause of the problems in California will become clear. Sunlight is the great disinfectant.
June 12, 2009 at 12:00 am
pigeon,
Your pay and benefits seem reasonable when compared to California’s and your pension fund may even be solvent. Please don’t take other comments too personally here. Many of us in California are absolutely fed up with what we are seeing. The unions run the state. They donate to the politicians and get everything they want with no accountability and now we are all be asked to pay for it.
What you say is true about not having much say in, but you are complicit when your union dues pay to bribe politicians.
June 12, 2009 at 12:15 am
Still, no one has offered up a good reason why we should name names. What for?
June 12, 2009 at 12:26 am
Helloooooooo?
June 12, 2009 at 1:57 am
I don’t need to know the names, but I also want something more specific than just how many total dollars are spent. I would like to see pensions above $100K listed, but without the names and whether it is the sole pension collected, or whether the recipient is collecting others as well.
Moving forward, it looks to me like there should be caps on how much people can collect.
June 12, 2009 at 7:00 am
Defined benefit pensions (hereafter abbreviated DBPs) are a relic of the industrial age which are unsustainable in the current economy. Most DBP plans were put in place decades ago, when the U.S. was the dominant economic power in the world, the largest creditor to other nations and flush with cash. Life expectancies were shorter, and there were ample numbers of young people paying taxes to support a relatively small number of elderly pensioners. In those by-gone days, the average life span was such that getting a pension at 45 or 50 years meant you were near the end of your life in many cases. Now, the situation is very different: we are the largest debtor in the world, and huge numbers of elderly are on the horizon, from within the public sector and otherwise. Military, police, fire, and other pension plans were simply not designed actuarially, to sustain payments over 3,4 or even 5 decades. Do the math, system-wide, we go broke if too many pensioners live too long. There won’t be sufficient money for our other public expenditure needs. Just look at Oakland, CA, or Vajello, CA. The former is going under in bankruptcy, the latter already has – in large part due to not being able to afford lavish public pensions promised during the boom years.
There are some simply solutions, however, if our elected officials and judges have the courage to act.
1. No one gets to retire at age 45 or 50 on a public pension if he is able to work. Your pension payout begins at 65, with the exception of the truly disabled – or you take a one-time cash payment of lesser value up-front. That goes for federal retirees, military, you name it.
That alone saves many billions of dollars.
2. If we aren’t willing to raise retirement ages, then enact across the board cuts in benefits, on a progressive basis – the bigger your slice of the pension pie, the more you get cut. Let’s start at say 20% across the board, and see what that saves us.
3. Eliminate DBP plans for all public employees hired going forward into the future. This does not help the current mess, but it stops the bleeding.
Henceforth, public employees will be compensated in the open market, just like their private sector peers, and will be expected to save for retirement out of those earnings. Yep, just like everyone else.
4. There is one other option, do nothing and let the system go broke. That suits me fine, I’d love to see government get smaller by whatever means possible. It may very well come to that, since many unions seem to prefer cutting off their – and their member’s noses – to spite their faces.
5. Drastically cut back other public expenditures, to fund pension and other legacy obligations. This might work for a time, but it is not tenable politically in the long-term. The government has to mantain roads, fund existing (not retired) law enforcement and other services, and provide for other competing needs.
The bottom line is this: The goose that lays the golden egg is the private sector. The government does not create wealth, it takes it from others via taxation. Current and former government employees may reply that their pensions are protected by law, but if the public treasury is empty, how will they be paid? The Pension Guaranty Corp. is many billions in the red, they can’t rescue all of them, either.
The government has lived beyond its means for years, making promises it cannot possibly keep to virtually everyone. Now that the public entitlements crisis appears poised to hit in a few years, it seems that teachers, cops, firemen, and others were played, too. The system is a house of cards and it can’t stand much longer. No nation in history has survived debt like we have, with anything like its former prosperity intact.
The guess here is that the feds will either raise taxes dramatically, thereby taking back some of that pension money anyway, or start the printing presses, which is a de facto form of taxation, or both. Either way, the common people get the shaft.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but that’s how I see it. If it is any consolation, the lot of private-sector people is going to be as tough, maybe tougher.
Retirement like our parents and grandparents had is, sadly, probably a thing of the past for people of middle-class means.
June 12, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Governmental pension plans are subject to the maximum benefit limitations under Internal Revenue Code Section 415. The amounts quoted in this post are clearly well in excess of these maximum benefit limitations.
“The San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District chief, Craig Bowen, retired last December at age 51 with an annual salary of about $221,000 a year. His annual pension is $284,000.”
Here’s a couple of problems: first, under 415 you can’t retire and receive more than 100% of your highest three-consecutive year average salary, so there is obviously just a little violation here. Second, there is a dollar limit that you can’t violate; the dollar limit in 2008 was $185,000, assuming commencement at age 62. The amount of the dollar limit is reduced actuarially for commencement prior to age 62 (the post indicates age 51 retirement age). So $284,000 is just a tad over the mark, to put it mildly.
Benefits in excess of the 415 limits are definitely not protected, because if they actually followed the terms of the plan document they never should have been earned in the first place.
I’d suggest IRS involvement in this matter. Maybe not excessive tax deductions involved here since they’re government plans, but in the end excessive public expenditures are just as damaging.
June 12, 2009 at 4:25 pm
You know, these are all very good points and I agree with most of them (except the elimination of the defined benefit per se). However, look at the title of the article “Big pensioners: should they be named?”. Well?
June 12, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Those who choose to work in the public sector have to accept that their salaries and pension allowances (and even their financial interests and travel reimbursements) will be open to public scrutiny. Nonetheless, the problem with these lists is that they can leave the impression that the outliers are the norm.
If there are 5,000 on that list of retirees earning $100k or more, that means fewer than 1% of CalPERS retirees earn retirement allowances of $100K or more per year.
My guess is that the average state and public agency (non saftey officer) retires around age sixty with a salary of $60K, and about 20-25 years of service. That translates to a retirement allowance of about $30,000 or a little more. Definitely not extravagant
June 13, 2009 at 5:14 am
Travesty.
Most government workers earn very little and enter into contracts for health benefits that they have to help pay for. After they retire they discover that their employer is doing everything they can to get out of the contracts because they don’t want to pay for increases in health care premiums. They make the public think that the employees earned too much by publishing their names and pay, highlighting the few that make more. Most plans are paid primarily from employee contributions (wages) and in time by earned interest and NOT taxes. Employers want to get out of their contracts and pass the health plan increases on to the retirees. It is dirty business.
Maybe if they’d managed their agencies properly they wouldn’t be looking to loot retiree’s benefits. Keep employee/retiree information private. Stop this ploy that gov’t agencies are stooping to.
June 14, 2009 at 1:12 am
Revocco, noone is discounting what you say. However, do you have any idea how much the obscene pension amounts actually cost (I’m a pension actuary, so I know). Aren’t you a little intrigued by the fact that what is being paid to the outliers listed here are in fact blatanlty illegal under the IRS Code?
And as far as your assertion that these plans are being primarily paid by employee contributions: governmental plans are drastically less funded than private sector plans. In point of fact, if the new regulations promulgated by the Pension Protection Act of 2006 were extended to governmental plans (especially after the market collapse), all future accruals would automatically be shut off due to the funding ratio.
June 16, 2009 at 9:57 pm
“My guess is that the average state and public agency (non safety officer) retires around age sixty with a salary of $60K, and about 20-25 years of service. That translates to a retirement allowance of about $30,000 or a little more. Definitely not extravagant”
Let’s even take that number, it represents about $500k put into an annuity (60 year old unmarried male).
Did the employee plus the state actually manage to set aside that much money plus ROI over time?
July 21, 2009 at 2:55 pm
If you don’t want your name published don’t take a government job that the taxpayer pays you to do – an easy solution. The ripoffs must stop.
July 21, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Publish the names of public employee retirees and retirement amount. Don’t stop at $100,000. List all. Public seems to think all public employees are making $100,000 and more. I worked for almost 30 years and I am not getting over $100,000 in retirement. I know quite a few individuals that did not get $100,000 in salary or in retirement. Prior lists of public employees leads the public to think that is the majority. There are many employees making minimum wage and up. List everybody. maybe 5,000 employess over 100,000 and 5 million making less.
July 21, 2009 at 3:53 pm
pensions are a luxury of the past. Interestingly enough pensions only exist for people who are paid by the taxpayer. And the vast majority of taxpayers does not have any pension at all. I’d say no more pensions for any state or city employees, just like the rest of us.
July 21, 2009 at 4:01 pm
They should be named and have their pensions reduced as an act of civil emergency.
July 21, 2009 at 4:35 pm
“They should be named and have their pensions reduced as an act of civil emergency.”
Yes, and those who abused the public trust to line their own pockets need to be prosecuted and jailed.
July 21, 2009 at 5:14 pm
It’s funny – you folks that are getting your pensions think YOU HAVE A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO THEM, EVEN THOUGH WE TAXPAYERS ARE FOOTING THE BILL. If you can’t take the shame or publicity of taking taxpayer’s loot because YOU EARNED IT BY GOLLY, EVEN AFTER YOU’RE IN RETIREMENT, then you folks definitely need to be exposed.
July 21, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Now now should be making more then 200,000 pension. People who are making more then 200,000 for not doing nothing are stealing money from me, you, and my kids. if they do not like it they can go and look for an other job in the private sector. People who work for the government do it because they like to serve the people and make a “living wage” not $200,000, $300,000, $900,000 on the back of the people. They should reform the the system not to allow this
July 21, 2009 at 5:31 pm
No one should be making more then 200,000 pension. People who are making more then 200,000 for not doing nothing are stealing money from me, you, and my kids. if they do not like it they can go and look for an other job in the private sector. People who work for the government do it because they like to serve the people and make a “living wage” not $200,000, $300,000, $900,000 on the back of the people. They should reform the the system not to allow this
July 21, 2009 at 7:40 pm
$100K pension is probably excessive – unless it is me.
July 21, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Personally, I do not think that we should keep all of the details of our pension fund secret. My neighbors who are loosing money through furlough days. If you google the names of the people who earn pensions over $100,000 and worked in the Los Angeles School District, you will see that they were not teachers, assistant principals or principals. They were all in the small group of individuals who were promoted or moved out of the schools and direct us from the downtown offices. That fact may not make a difference to someone who is not a teacher, but it does to me. There are always people trying to get promoted out of the classroom and then out of the school. They do not need such a large monetary incentive.
I started teaching one year after graduating from college. If I retire at 60, the report I received last year indicates that I will received $4369.88 a month. I am now 48 yeas old. In times like these, those with 401k’s whose retirement incomes are somehow linked to the rise and fall of the economy probably see a defined retirement income like mine as unfair. I realize that 401k’s are considered bad by many people now, but were they not beating out defined retirement incomes in the 1990’s?
October 1, 2009 at 7:07 pm
My brother in law is a dallas firefighter, and I was shocked to see how much overtime they are allowed to work, and how much pay they take home. He works his usual 24 hour shift then is hired for an hireback another 24 hour shift then pick up extra hours working shortages in other stations. Also, from a public safety stand point is it safe for a firefighter to work that much?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to hire another firefighter to work the shifts that have shortages then pay the overtime? When I hear about the lay offs for the City of Dallas and I asked my brother in law he laughed and said they couldn’t be touched and with the overtime he is making 2k to 3k every month. I am very proud of our police and fire I just don’t think this is known to the public. I for one was shocked how much money they actually get paid. The pension is known to be a big recruiting point for them, and I can see why.
November 29, 2009 at 4:59 am
I fully understand the public’s outrage over this issue and agree many pensions are “way over the top.” However, your R.A.G.E. mostly belongs with & toward the politicians who authorized these pensions in order to: 1) eliminate any & all liability from the general fund by avoiding pay raises therefrom; and, 2) transfer the increased benefits/liability on the retirement system “down the road” when those same politicians would be “long gone” or on to higher office … largely due to CA’s term limits. I’m a retired PUBLIC SERVANT and never anticipated or asked for this level of public benefit. I purposely worked a part-time job for 20-plus years (The Naval Reserve) just to insure that I would have an extra retirement income with health insurance benefits to supplement what I thought would be a 50% municipal retirement “at best!” I was astounded to learn that a nearly 90% pension was in the offering due to “our municipal fathers” working their magic as described above. If you want to hold people responsible, look to the politicians who created these pension benefits through & of their own devices!
November 22, 2011 at 5:35 am
dieta dukan…
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