Victory for taxpayers in Wisconsin and California - The taxpayers have had enough

The news proclaimed the victory by Scott Walker over Big Labor in Wisconsin....expected and well done Governor Walker...The people told the Unions enough is enough....

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77098.html


The BIGGER story came out of California....Too many Public Employees were not satisfied with lifetime pensions and benefits on the taxpayers ( which they never paid into out of their paychecks) and kept gaming the system. Voters in San Diego sent them a real message.

Well, as they say, things that occur in California are "usually" a pre-indicator to things that will occur across the country.....this is the BIG NEWS you will likely not read anywhere else....

REAL change....not the kind that the Fool in the White House yapped about......The taxpayers have had enough. That is the message from last night's vote.


2 California cities voters approve pension cuts
By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press 

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Voters in two major California cities overwhelmingly approved measures to cut retirement benefits for city workers Tuesday in contests being closely watched as states and local governments throughout the country struggle with mounting pension obligations.

In San Diego, 67 percent voted in favor of Proposition B while 33 percent were opposed. More than 65 percent of precincts reported.

The margin in San Jose was even wider, with 71 percent in favor of Measure B and 29 percent opposed. Nearly half of precincts reported.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed called the vote a victory for fiscal reform.

"The voters get it, they understand what needs to be done," he said in an interview.
Supporters had a straightforward pitch: Pensions for city workers are unaffordable and more generous than many private companies offer, forcing libraries to slash hours and potholes to go unfilled.

"We believe people are tired of having services cut back because of big pensions," San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican who is being forced from office by term limits, said recently.

Shrinking tax revenues during the recession are also responsible for service cuts, but pensions are an easy target. San Diego's payments to the city's retirement fund soared from $43 million in 1999 to $231.2 million this year, equal to 20 percent of the city's general fund budget, which pays for day-to-day operations.

As the pension payments grew, San Diego's 1.3 million residents saw roads deteriorate and libraries and recreation centers cut hours. For a while, some fire stations had to share engines and trucks. The city has cut its workforce 14 percent to 10,100 employees since Sanders took office in 2005.

San Jose's pension payments jumped from $73 million in 2001 to $245 million this year, equal to 27 percent of its general fund budget. Voters there approved construction bonds at the beginning of the last decade, but four new libraries and a police station have never opened because the city cannot afford to operate them. The city of 960,000 cut its workforce 27 percent to 5,400 over the last 10 years.

Opponents, led by public employee unions, say the measures deprive workers of benefits they were counting on when they got hired. Some workers decided against potentially more lucrative jobs with private companies, figuring their retirement was relatively safe.
"This is part of a broader effort to attack workers and to make their lives miserable," San Diego Councilman Todd Gloria said during a debate on the San Diego measure.

Thom Reilly, former manager of Clark County, Nev., and now a professor of social work at San Diego State University, said opponents face a difficult task. He expects the California measures may spawn similar efforts elsewhere if they pass.

"The ones who are actually paying the taxes will never see these benefits in their lifetimes, so there's not a lot of sympathy in the public," he said.

The ballot measures differ on specifics. San Diego's imposes a six-year freeze on pay levels used to determine pension benefits unless a two-thirds majority of the City Council votes to override it. It also puts new hires, except for police officers, into 401(k)-style plans.
More than 100,000 residents signed petitions to put the San Diego measure on the ballot.
Under San Jose's measure, current workers have to pay up to 16 percent of their salaries to keep their retirement plan or accept more modest benefits. New hires would get less generous benefits.

Reed, a Democrat, joined an 8-3 City Council majority to put the measure on the ballot. He said Tuesday that he expected other cities in financial binds to pursue similar measures.

"We're at the leading edge but we're not alone," he said.

New York’s teacher-retirement fund refuses to disclose info on how much they pay, even though taxpayers foot the bill

NY Taxpayers should be outraged by the conduct of these public employees. They want to keep secret information that shows how much tax money is being spent - even though the public foots the bill...The only response I can muster is "whiskey tango foxtrot ?"

If this is the direction public servants will take with taxpayers, then there should be a movement to end the pensions and cap the funds. The taxpayers should be able to review the fund's books and see who is rigging the game. Anything less would be criminal.


Mum’s the word
December 27, 2011
www.nypost.com

New York’s teacher-retirement fund wants to keep taxpayers in the dark about the pensions it hands out. Must be some darn fat pensions, huh?

Wouldn’t want to enrage the public to the point where pensions are trimmed, now would it?

In a predictable — but disturbing — development, the state Teachers’ Retirement System last week said it will no longer publicly disclose the names of teachers and how much they get in retiree benefits.

Even though the public foots the bill.

The move comes after other public-sector pension systems zipped their lips, following a disturbing appellate-court ruling last October.


That decision nixed a request by the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for the names of retired city police officers and their benefits.

The center had filed suit when the police fund suddenly refused to provide the info — after having done so for 28 years.

Unfortunately, both a state judge and an appellate panel ruled for the fund. Now virtually every pension system in the state is clamming up, citing the court rulings.

The Teachers’ Retirement System joined the club just days after the Empire Center filed papers to appeal the case before the state’s highest court.

It’s a troubling trend.

Which is why The Post and other news organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief calling for full disclosure.

After all, taxpayers pay for pensions; they have a right to know how their money is spent. Be it on salaries (which are routinely disclosed) or pensions.

Over the past few years, The Post has uncovered numerous public-pension scams, many of them involving individual retirees.

Like FDNY Lt. John “Johnny Lungs” McLaughlin, who retired on an $86,000 tax-free disability pension — even while competing in marathons and triathlons.

Available information has exposed systemic problems, too, like the Railroad Retirement Board’s granting of disability pensions to nearly everyone at the LIRR who sought one. None of these (or other abuses) could’ve been uncovered without the public disclosure of retirees’ names.

And again, this is information that has been openly available — without protest — for almost three decades.

It was only when the Empire Center set up an easily searchable Web site with names and pension amounts that the funds started squawking.

But the Web site did taxpayers a service.

The court rulings made things even worse than they were before.

Clearly, the Court of Appeals needs to hear this case quickly and reverse the earlier decisions. And make sure taxpayers stay clued in on the funds’ big secret

Rhode Island...The Little State with a Big Public Employee Pension Problem

Rhode Island has always been in Massachusetts' shadow. The citizens of the "Little Rhody" have always competed with the Bay State.

Both States have been a haven for the Unions and each has had a mainly Democratic make-up. Massachusetts is the bluest of Blue States but RI has been Union Heaven for decades.

Well, now we have one category that RI has beaten MA to the punch on....Rhode Island is going broke.....mainly because of all the public pensions it owes to the union members who worked for the towns/state. How about hearing that 10 cents of every dollar RI takes in goes to pension payments ?? Sounds scary, eh??

Read the NY Times story enclosed and be scared....this is what the rigged game our public employees and their union cohorts have foisted on us. The RI Legislature had the courage to propose rolling back benefits for public employees, including those who have already retired...Can RI be saved from itself ?? We will see.


The Little State with a Big Mess
By Mary Williams Walsh - NY TIMES
CRANSTON, R.I.

ON the night of Sept. 8, Gina M. Raimondo, a financier by trade, rolled up here with news no one wanted to hear: Rhode Island, she declared, was going broke.

Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But if current trends held, Ms. Raimondo warned, the Ocean State would soon look like Athens on the Narragansett: undersized and overextended. Its economy would wither. Jobs would vanish. The state would be hollowed out.

It is not the sort of message you might expect from Ms. Raimondo, a proud daughter of Providence, a successful venture capitalist and, not least, the current general treasurer of Rhode Island. But it is a message worth hearing. The smallest state in the union, it turns out, has a very big debt problem.

After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode Island’s $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis.

Ten cents of every state tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it might have missed some. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions, including the big one: Are these numbers for real?

“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of this state,” Ms. Raimondo said in a recent interview. And if the fight is lost? “Either the pension fund runs out of money or cities go bankrupt.”

All of this might seem small in the scheme of national affairs. After all, this is Little Rhody (population: 1,052,567). But the nightmare scenario is that Ms. Raimondo has seen the future of America, and it is Rhode Island. As Wall Street fixates on the financial disaster in Greece, a fiscal wreck is playing out right here. And the odds are that it won’t be the last. Before this is over, many Americans may be forced to rethink what government means at the state and local level.

Economists have talked endlessly about a financial reckoning for the United States, of a moment in the not-so-far-away when the nation’s profligate ways catch up with it. But for Rhode Island, that moment is now. The state has moved to safeguard its bond investors, to avoid being locked out of the credit markets. Last week, the General Assembly went into special session and proposed rolling back benefits for public employees, including those who have already retired. Whether the plan will succeed is anyone’s guess.

Central Falls, a small city north of Providence, didn’t wait for news from the Statehouse. In August, the city filed for bankruptcy rather than keep its pension promises to its retired firefighters and police officers.

Illinois, California, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Michigan — the list of stretched states runs on. In Pennsylvania, the capital city, Harrisburg, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month to avoid having to use prized assets to pay off Wall Street creditors. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie wants to roll back benefits, too.

In most places, as in Rhode Island, the big issue is pensions. By conventional measures, state and local pensions nationwide now face a combined shortfall of about $3 trillion. Officials argue that, by their accounting, the total is far less. But with pensions, hope often triumphs over experience. Until this year, Rhode Island calculated its pension numbers by assuming that its various funds would post an average annual return on their investments of 8.25 percent; the real number for the last decade is about 2.4 percent. A phrase that gets thrown around here, à la Rick Perry describing Social Security, is “Ponzi scheme.”

That evening in September, Ms. Raimondo walked into the Cranston Portuguese Club to face yet another angry audience. People like Paul L. Valletta Jr., the head of Local 1363 of the firefighters union.

“I want to get the biggest travesty out of the way here,” Mr. Valletta boomed from the back of the hall. “You’re going after the retirees! In this economic time, how could you possibly take a pension away?”

Someone else in the audience said Rhode Island was reneging on a moral obligation.

Ms. Raimondo, 40, stood her ground. Rhode Island, she said, had a choice: it could pay for schoolbooks, roadwork, care for the elderly and so on, or it could keep every promise to its retirees.

“I would ask you, is it morally right to do nothing, and not provide services to the state’s most vulnerable citizens?” she asked the crowd. “Yes, sir, I think this is moral.”

FOR many Americans, the Ocean State conjures images of Newport mansions and Narragansett chic. The overall reality is more prosaic. Rhode Island today is a place where the roads and bridges rank among the worst in the nation and where jobs are particularly hard to find. Unemployment rose faster during the 2008-9 recession than in any other state. The official jobless rate is now 10.6 percent, versus the national average of 9.1 percent.

The textile mills and jewelry manufacturers that once employed thousands here have dwindled away. The big employers today are in health care and education, both of which rely heavily on government spending that has been drying up.

Many states and cities can credibly say their pension plans are viable, even when those plans are not fully funded. That is because state retirement funds, like Social Security, pay out benefits bit by bit, over many years.

But unlike, say, California, with its large, diverse economy, Rhode Island is so small that there is little margin for error. Leaving the state, to escape its taxes, is almost as easy as moving to the other side of town. Efforts to balance the state budget by shrinking the public work force have left Rhode Island with a problem like the one that plagues General Motors: the state has more public-sector retirees than public-sector workers.

More ominous still, in each of the last 10 years, the state pension fund paid more money to retirees than the fund collected from state employees and taxpayers combined. The fund is shrinking, even though the benefits coming due are growing.

For all the pain here, one important constituency — Wall Street — seems satisfied enough. To reassure its bond investors, Rhode Island passed a special law this year giving them first dibs on tax revenue. In other words, bondholders will be paid, whatever happens. Ms. Raimondo has at times been accused of selling out ordinary Rhode Islanders to Wall Street interests, but she says hard choices must be made.

Ms. Raimondo remembers better times in Rhode Island. She grew up in a suburb of Providence, rode public buses to public schools and played in public parks. Her grandfather, who arrived from Italy, studied English in the evenings at the Providence Public Library. (That library system lost its financing from the city in 2009, closed branches and shortened its hours. These days, it is seldom open after 6 p.m.)

But Ms. Raimondo also learned early on about economic forces at work in her state. When she was in sixth grade, the Bulova watch factory, where her father worked, shut its doors. He was forced to retire early, on a sharply reduced pension; he then juggled part-time jobs.

“You can’t let people think that something’s going to be there if it’s not,” Ms. Raimondo said in an interview in her office in the pillared Statehouse, atop a hill in Providence. No one should be blindsided, she said. If pensions are in trouble, it’s better to deliver the news and give people time to make other plans.

BY any standard, Ms. Raimondo is a high achiever. She graduated from Harvard, collected a law degree from Yale and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. After a stint in New York in the venture capital business, she helped found Rhode Island’s first venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital.

Then, in 2009, with zero political experience, she ran for the state office of treasurer. Although she is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state, she stood out because she refused to promise that state jobs and pension benefits would be protected no matter what. She won by a landslide, receiving more votes than any other candidate for any state office. Her long-term ambitions, in politics, business or both, are the subject of speculation in Providence.

No sooner had she been sworn in than the S.E.C. called. She learned that the commission was investigating the finances of various cities and states, including Rhode Island, to determine whether bond investors were receiving truthful information. At the heart of the S.E.C. inquiry were pension funds.

Ms. Raimondo said she wasn’t entirely surprised. When she disclosed the investigation, she said: “For months, Rhode Island has been listed among several states with precarious finances. This challenging position is, in part, due to our significant and growing unfunded pension liability.” Her first priority, she vowed, would be to ensure that the numbers were right.

Others made similar pledges before. Rhode Island has been trying to fix its pension system for years; it has announced four “reform” plans since 2005, each of which has claimed to reduce costs for the state and cities. It has raised minimum retirement ages, slowed accrual rates, capped cost-of-living adjustments — but always for the youngest or least senior public workers. Retirees, and workers poised to retire, were spared, even though the numbers clearly showed that reducing payments to retirees was the only sure way to fix things quickly.

In recent months Ms. Raimondo has crisscrossed the state in an attempt to sell a different remedy, one in which everyone takes a hit. Yes, it would hurt. But at least the state would avoid having to come up with yet another plan in a year or two. The defined-benefit structure, very popular with public employees, could survive. Still, the battle lines are clear. Eight public workers’ unions have already sued, saying the pension changes of 2009 and 2010 were illegal.

On a September evening out in North Scituate, at the historic Old Congregational Church, Ms. Raimondo told a crowd about what had happened in Vallejo, Calif. That city filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and, after grueling negotiations, left pensions intact but drastically cut bus service, police patrols and other government functions, along with the pay of the city workers who provide all those services.

“That’s not what we want for Rhode Island,” Ms. Raimondo said. “That’s not the future we want for our children.”

Others in the crowd had their own stories. Several retired teachers said they had played by the rules and sent a part of every paycheck to the pension fund, as required by law. One man demanded pension cuts for state troopers and judges. A woman said her aged father would be unable to buy medicine if the state stopped adjusting his pension for inflation.

“I feel your anger,” Ms. Raimondo told the crowd. “In many ways, I’m angry myself. Many of the shenanigans that went on in past years were just wrong.”

In some ways, the central question is not only what the government owes to pensioners but what citizens owe to one another. From the pews of the church, Cindy Gould, a fourth-grade teacher, said that under the current system, she had 11 years to go until retirement. Under Ms. Raimondo’s plan, she might have to work longer. But, Ms. Gould, 54, said she was willing to do so if that meant the elderly would get the medical care they need.

Since the last recession hit, states and cities around the country have embarked on pension changes, often following the Rhode Island pattern. Benefits for state employees who have not yet been hired are usually the first to be cut. Then come changes for those now on the payroll, often in the form of higher mandatory contributions.

Retirees have mostly been off-limits, until now. In many instances, laws or legal precedent shield them. In the corporate sphere, they are supposed to bear losses only in bankruptcy. But those rules do not apply to states, which may not declare bankruptcy in any case. If a government homes in on retirees, a lawsuit is sure to follow, and the resolution will take years. But Ms. Raimondo says Rhode Island doesn’t have years. This isn’t a question of politics or law, she says, but of simple math. To get the numbers right, Ms. Raimondo quickly assembled a panel of experts that included academics, mayors and union officials. The goal was to figure out what a public pension should be and what Rhode Island could afford. Inflation protection every year, for people who in some cases retired in their 40s, started coming into focus.

Analysts also took a close look at the projected long-term investment return for the pension system: 8.25 percent. Everything rested on hitting that target, but the state’s actuary said there was less than a 30 percent chance that would happen over the next 20 years. The board voted to lower the assumption to 7.5 percent. (Given the recent run in the financial markets, even that figure may seem optimistic.)

As a result of that change, the state’s pension shortfall instantly rose to $9 billion from $7 billion. The unions said Ms. Raimondo had manufactured a crisis.

She denied it. “This is about the truth,” she said, “and about doing the right thing.”

Then, as if on cue, Central Falls declared bankruptcy. The city’s pension fund wasn’t just underfunded. It was completely out of money. A receiver for the city sought court permission to reduce by as much as half the base pensions of retired police officers and firefighters.

Suddenly the pension crisis wasn’t an abstraction any more. The unthinkable had happened, and the odds were that it would happen again unless the state acted quickly.

Other mayors began stepping forward and warning that their communities were on the brink, too. Here in Cranston, Mayor Allan W. Fung said that unless things changed, he would have to eliminate trash collection, services to the elderly and recreation programs for children, as well as reduce the size of the police force and fire department.

Over in Woonsocket, John W. Ward, the president of the City Council, said that all summer parks programs had been eliminated and that teachers were working with larger classes than their contracts allowed. Half of Woonsocket’s streetlights were out because the city couldn’t afford to replace them. His son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter had moved to another state.

“To allow the pension system to remain largely unchanged will make it impossible for Woonsocket, and every other urban community, to survive,” Mr. Ward said.

AT the Portuguese Club in Cranston, José M. Berto raised his hand. At 62, he told Ms. Raimondo, he was on the cusp of retirement.

“We’re looking at a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff look like a Boy Scout,” said Mr. Berto, a supply officer for the state.

He asked if Rhode Island’s pension problem was the worst in the nation.

Ms. Raimondo said it was.

“I don’t like her message,” Mr. Berto said after the session. “But she has been honest, forthcoming. We’re in trouble. We’re just in so much trouble.”

Like Pigs at the feeding trough - Educators line themselves up for taxpayer-funded benefits of $100,000 a year or more

The fact that the number of $100K pensions has skyrocketed is a key indication that the people setting themselves up for these outrageously high retirements have no care for anyone else but themselves. Greedy Bastards who claim to have worked for this waste of taxpayers money. The educators only paid in 11% of their pay in and in return collect the other 89% from the taxpayers......Nice return when you get 800% back on your investment.

They claim that they are entitled to it because they worked hard over their careers...the many taxpayers who will be footing the bill for these blowhards worked hard also, they just didn't have a HACK based & written law mandating a major ripoff of the taxpayers assisting them.

These HACKS can make up all the reasons they want to justify this ripoff of the taxpayers. It is still an affront to all those who have to pay the way for these ripoff artists who have used the law to feather their own nest with a " I got mine" selfish attitude.

Educator’s pensions skyrocket
Expert: ‘Urgent need for reform’
By Chris Cassidy - Boston Herald
Monday, July 25, 2011

The number of retired Bay State public school employees raking in six-figure pensions has skyrocketed — more than doubling in just four years — contributing to a booming retirement bonanza that could plunge the Bay State into a deep financial crisis unless lawmakers move quickly to fix the system, experts told the Herald.

The latest pension records indicate 140 educators, most of them administrators, are enjoying retired life with taxpayer-funded benefits of $100,000 a year or more — up from 93 in 2009 and 55 in 2007, a Herald investigation found.

Topping the list is retired Randolph Superintendent Arthur Melia, with an annual pension of $147,492.

“I always strived to be No. 1 at everything, you know?” Melia told the Herald. “This was part of the law and part of what I earned over 32 years.”

Former Concord Superintendent Brenda Finn ($145,724) and retired Whittier Vocational Superintendent Karen Sarkisian ($142,913) round out the top three.

The June 30 figures from the Massachusetts Teachers Retirement System also showed educators’ pensions last fiscal year totaled $2.1 billion, up $300 million in two years.

“This is a serious problem, and there’s an urgent need for reform,” said Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “Just as companies have found they can’t afford defined pension plans because they’re too rich, governments are finding the same problems.”

“This is the tip of the pension iceberg,” said David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute. “Sooner or later Massachusetts will reach a crisis point, where we find ourselves unable to maintain normal functions of government and are unable to pay for these pensions because of resistance of taxpayers to further tax increases.”

Critics point to the state’s generous formula that gives public retirees 80 percent of their three highest consecutive earning years. They warn the state is putting off the day of reckoning.

“They need to act fast,” said Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute. “This is something that’s not going away, and it’s going to eat up other services we’re trying to afford”

Gov. Deval Patrick introduced a pension reform bill in January that would push back retirement ages and base pensions on a retiree’s five highest years of service. A legislative subcommittee held a hearing in March and is considering other ideas, including putting a maximum cap on pensions, and expects to present a bill in early fall, state Rep. John Scibak said.

“The real thing I’m striving for is a system perceived both by state employees and the general public as fair and equitable,” said Scibak, who chairs the Public Service Committee.

The rising pensions are a result of a superintendent shortage and the grueling nature of the 24/7 job, which have driven up salaries, said Tom Scott of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

“There is a big problem with finding qualified people . . . even in this job market,” Scott said.

Paul Toner of the Massachusetts Teachers Association said strong pensions keep teachers from leaving the profession and that teachers now pay a higher percentage of their salary — 11 percent — into the system.

“A good pension is a major retention tool,” Toner said.