Cities target police pensions

| January 17, 2014

Pinto Nag sends us a link to an NBC News article about municipalities who are looking to mimic the Obama Administration and cut their costs by exploring ways to screw cops out of what they earned. Cops, however, have a way of striking back;

In Costa Mesa, California, lawmaker Jim Righeimer says he was a target of intimidation because he sought to curb police pensions. In a lawsuit in November, Righeimer accused the Costa Mesa police union and a law firm that once represented them, of forcing him to undergo a sobriety test (he passed) after driving home from a bar in August 2012.

That followed a call to 911 by private detective Chris Lanzillo, who worked for the police union and the law firm that represented it, according to the suit. Lanzillo is also named as a defendant, accused of following Righeimer home from the bar.

Disputes such as these have intensified as Detroit and two California cities, Stockton and San Bernardino, have gone bankrupt in the past two years. Police pension costs were a major factor in the financial troubles facing all three. Now large cities, including San Jose and San Diego, say they have no choice but to alter pension agreements lest they end up in bankruptcy too.

The suit by lawmaker Righeimer also said that an FBI raid of the law firm last October uncovered evidence that an electronic tracking device had been attached to the underside of the car driven by another lawmaker, Steve Mensinger, one of Righeimer’s allies in the pension fight.

“What we are alleging is a conspiracy to gather information against political opponents”, said John Manly, a lawyer representing Righeimer and Mensinger.

Basically, it appears to me that Liberals think they have some sort of mandate from the voters to screw everyone who is not them, the boogiemen cops and troops who are better than them and actually do the heavylifting for society that makes them feel inadequate and coming up short in the shorts. Folks take these thankless jobs because they expect to be compensated, and they expect lawmakers to keep their word in regards to that compensation. I guess that’s expecting too much from bed-wetting pussies.

Category: Police

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Old Trooper

Well, just like the auto industry, where they continually negotiated benefits packages they knew was unsustainable over the long haul, they brought it upon themselves and now they want to back out of it.

For the record, I hate public sector unions, because it’s an incestuous relationship at best and

Old Trooper

downright corrupt at worst. With the loser being the public.

Former 11B

Jonn, Righeimer is a Republican taking on a greedy police union, not some guy trying to screw cops.

SSG Medzyk

Look for, the union label….

Azygos

John,

What they may be looking at is Pension spiking. They save up PTO and paid time for professional services not related directly to working and cash those hours in during their last year working. This artificially raises their last years employment base.

If retirement is based on what you earn the last year one worked then by doing this they can raise their pension by tens of thousands of dollars above what they actually earned.

kirk

this shit is coming to a head,,fast and furious.

HS Sophomore

It seems this was undergone through less than ethical means, but California’s pension obligations are absolutely ridiculous. The system is completely controlled by public unions, who are California’s single most powerful political constituency. They managed to get the legislature to pass a measure back in the 90s that made the taxpayers completely liable for retirement liabilities and eliminated any risk on their part (while predicting the retirement fund would generate 8% investment returns that would only increase; bahaha). It also allowed the cops to retire in their early fifties with 100% of their final salaries and free healthcare. California is currently in about 400B worth of pension debt, and 800B of debt total. It’s bankrupting us, and it has to end. The cops need to compromise, as do all our other employees who enjoy such packages.

HS Sophomore

Jonn, I can see where you’re coming from here with all the (completely unjustified changes) to veteran’s pensions. However, out on the left coast, it’s a totally different ballgame. Here’s the difference between that and what California’s going through. Veteran’s pensions account for a minuscule portion of the overall federal budget (because the pensions are so tiny and so few US Military men and women stay on for 20 years). They’re just being cut because veterans and active-duty military who receive pensions are an easy constituency to screw over without repercussions, given that there are so damn few of you and active military and reserves can’t unionize. However, in California, they CAN unionize, and our public employees have exploited that almightily. Even the least of them receive 70% of their final year’s salary and at least subsidized healthcare for the rest of their lives (and all this is GUARANTEED; their is no assumption of risk by public employees). That’s the next big difference. Even after 20 years, the proportion of their final salary military retirees get (their salary being minuscule to begin with) is tiny at 50%. I’m not entirely sure what the health care arrangement is, but for damn sure it can’t be as generous as in CA. Finally, the abuses of the California system are simply ridiculous. The overtime requirements are either non-existent or non-enforced (a state-employed psychiatrist was able to up his salary to more than 850k a year using this before he got caught), employees can add their unused healthcare, vacation, and sick leave into their retirement calculator (Bruce Melkenhorst, an ex-Alameda County supervisor, has used this tactic to get himself a pension of more than 500k a year since he retired), and the beat goes on and on. These don’t exist for military retirees. I realize you sympathize with your fellow public protector who is getting his pension cut, but I wouldn’t say IMHO he is deserving of sympathy.

UpNorth

California is famous for unsustainable pensions for police and fire-fighters.
The city of Detroit is famous, not only for crime, blight, and being home to a team that will never see a Super Bowl, but also for having the state of Michigan enact a law that commands a city or county to honor their contractual obligations to fund pension funds. Seems that back in the Coleman Young day, Detroit not only didn’t pay anything into the police and fire pension funds, the city raided those funds for funding for all of their pet projects. When it was finally discovered that the pension funds were worthless, the state stepped in.

My pension was computed on my last 3 years salary, no overtime, or comp time or vacation figured in to it. Our pension fund(not Detroit) is fully funded. Mostly from members contributions and wise investments. State laws demand that the city/county make contributions unless the pension fund is “fully funded” for the year. Our city government, over the span of the last 40 years or so, chose to deem our pension fund “over-funded” for all but about 7 of those years. So, they made no contributions at all. Now, they have to make contributions, so they’ve taken up the cry of “unsustainable pension payments”.
The chief of police just announced his retirement, his pension? $9K a month. If his wife should happen to pre-decease him, it increases to $10K a month.

Azygos

HSS,
Its happening here in AZ also. But as lucky as we are one scumbag Chief of Police “retired” here and took a job in Kalafornication where he will retire a second time before he is done. Using the same slimy tactics to artificially boost retirement income.

Stacy0311

so politicians bought the union vote with pension promises and now they’re looking to renege on the deal? I guess when veterans get pissed off enough to do a new Bonus Army march, the cops will be “I don’t see nothing”

UpNorth

@#11. Except for the kiss-asses who think they can advance their careers by screwing with the public, and their brothers and sisters.
See http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=39307

The Other Whitey

Well, I’m a firefighter in California, and I’d personally love to see some of that sweet 6-digit pension someday. Of course, I never will because I don’t have one of those plans, I have CalPERS, which is funded by deductions from my salary, which already ain’t that great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m on food stamps or anything, but I’ll never be rich either. Public safety salaries in California vary widely, and my rather large department is at the lower end of that spectrum.

There are also some cities here that have set up retirement systems that would be both generous and perfectly sustainable, but like Detroit get raided to prop up other not-so-sustainable programs. The politicians then dump blame on the cops/firefighters when they run out of other people’s money.

Then again, there are lots of lavishly-expensive programs out there, too.

HS Sophomore

To anyone interested: I recommend you take time in your day to read this:http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_1_calpers.html

It’s a very good explanation of how exactly it is that CA (and a lot of other places through the same means) got into this mess.

Other Whitey-Some departments are responsible, but many have not been. After the state passed its lavish new pension deals, most cities followed deals to attract the best, or so the politicians said. My guess is that your department was one of the few that was wise and held out. The fact of it is, CALPERS was always unsustainable. Union hacks like Gov. Gray Davis and state treasurer Phil Angelides made the current pension deals with the unions at the height of the dot-com bubble based on the assumption that state revenue would only grow from there and that the CALPERS portfolio would achieve 8% annual investment returns for all of the foreseeable future. You can guess how that’s turned out. CALPERS lost a total of 25-30% of its value during the recession, and it’s barely gained anything back. All of this was a direct result of the lobbying efforts of public employee unions.

However-in spite of this dispute, thanks for all you firefighters do, by the way. You folks get way too little credit.

The Other Whitey

@14 Look no further than the prison guards of CDCR, otherwise known as the highest paid state employees in California by a long shot. Even CalTrans makes less than they do, and retires later. I won’t offer a comparison to my salary, because it would be depressing.

To be fair, some of the guards do work hard, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want their job. But there are enough “others” running around that CDCR is sometimes called Welfare With a Badge.

Old Trooper

@11/12: That’s what I was getting at up top with my comments. The politicians play grab ass with the public sector unions in order to get support from them (look at Wisconsin over the last few years), then they want to crawfish on their obligations that they negotiated. Well, it’s only going to get worse.

Poetrooper

My wife and I were visiting some old friends from college days in El Paso. They have a large beautiful home on a golf course and multiple luxury automobiles. He was a utility worker who became a union rep and her career was in education. As he was showing me around their back yard, I noticed a large, two-story mansion on the far side of the fairway and said to my friend, “Got some pretty rich neighbors, huh?” He looked where I was looking and said, “Nah, he’s a retired firefighter.”

Nuff said…

SGT Ted

The union/political complex has broken the budgets of many California cities and counties paying far too much money in pension loads. Cities are faced with having to cut existing services to pay people top dollar not to work. Pension spiking schemes have been rampant and have broken the bank, robbing future cops, fire fighters and citizens.

Bankruptcy is their only way out, seeing as how the unions refuse to take pay cuts or even to contribute more from their own paychecks to help out on their end of the mess.

I am pro-public safety officer and anti-union. As I see it, you cannot serve 2 masters being a public servant, so the unions need to go. The unions are only in it for easy taxpayer cash to fund their political campaigns to elect politicians that give them more and more public money with no care in the world whether or not there’s enough money to actually pay for it.

HS Sophomore

@15-I wouldn’t want it either, but it’s a job pretty much anyone can do. The training is something like three weeks long total. I agree, they are grossly overpaid.

JohnC

“Liberals think they have some sort of mandate from the voters to screw everyone who is not them….”

Get on the wrong side of police unions and face trumped-up DUI charges and other brass knuckle tactics under the color of authority … and yet, this is somehow a story about politicians gone wrong???

And no, it’s not just, or even mostly, liberals: The thankless job is trying to revamp the pension system in as fair a way as possible before your city becomes Detroit, while at the same time police suddenly set out en masse scaring as many voters as possible searching house to house for every suspect of minor crimes they can think of. (Show me nothing but undated crime stats, and I’ll tell you exactly where the election cycle is and when salary negotiations are going on.)