Pension costs limit local government services
By Brad Branan, Sacramento Bee
In South Lake Tahoe, roads are crumbling, and the city is struggling to find ways to repair years of damage caused by harsh weather and snowplows. Orangevale residents worry that fire crews won’t arrive quickly enough in an emergency after their local fire station was closed during the recession.
Despite an economic recovery, local government leaders in California say rising pension costs have made it more difficult to restore some programs they cut during the recession.
Those plans will cost local governments an average of 42 cents for every dollar in current employee salary costs next year, a 25 percent increase over two years ago, the Sacramento Bee found in a review of records for 26 of the largest local governments in Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties participating in CalPERS.
Bankruptcy will be the only option for some. The policy makers are long gone and their poor decisions on pensions is why were here. And some spiked their pay the last years of work to game the system. We’ll go back to dirt roads before they cut pensions.
A crime against taxpayers.
These ‘pensioners’ are still collecting their ill gotten gains…they should all be locked up and their ill gotten gains divided by the taxpayers.
They are living large as are their children while the rest of you struggle to pay rent in non existent ‘low’ cost housing and ruin your cars in potholes!
Several years ago CalPERS advised the municipalities, jurisdictions, and agencies who participated in that pension plan that they [CalPERS] were “Super-funded” and that basically no one would ever need to pay into it again. Subsequent to that notification City Councils, Boards of Supervisors, and Boards of Directors increased pension benefits to employees as a reward for service and as an enticement for hiring. CalPERS then made poor investment choices with those funds that had been paid to them for employee retirement benefits, they lost huge amounts of money, and then of course the recession hit in 2008.
Everyone who had a fiduciary responsibility for that taxpayer money dropped the ball on this. CalPERS for stating they were Super-funded, and those City Councils and Boards that thought they could spend recklessly when told something that was too good to be true. It is the taxpayers who now have to pay the price of making up those losses for the careless decision-making in the past of those who had the fiduciary responsibly to safeguard what belonged to current and future retirees.
If an individual is careless in their personal life they have to pay the consequences; when government has been careless with taxpayer money the taxpayers just get to pay it over again.
Gee, I wonder why some people don’t trust government. [Sarcasm intended.]
It was more like 15 years ago, plenty of time to make adjustments, unless you wanted to get re elected.