Audit: CalPERS lacks strong pension spiking controls
By Jon Ortiz, Sacramento Bee
California’s largest public retirement system lacks a routine method for detecting pension spiking, according to a new released by state Controller John Chiang, and the pace at which it does check employers’ payroll is glacially slow.
The report also blasted a pay tactic that auditors estimate will allow some public employees to legally boost their pay and increase their pension payouts by up to $800 million over the next 20 years.
Chiang’s report focused on 11 employers that contract with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to administer their pension benefits. While auditors found no instances of spiking – a practice that inflates an employee’s salary through promotion or other means specifically to hike their retirement benefits – the review did reveal CalPERS’ auditing unit is understaffed and doesn’t use advanced technology to ferret out spiking.
In a statement accompanying the report, Chiang said CalPERS has a “generally passive approach to the problem” that invites abuse.
CalPERS President Rob Feckner countered that the $300.7 billion fund is deterring spiking with information drawn from its 3-year-old computer system.
What’s wrong with the new elite (government workers) screwing the taxpayer who guarantees the outrages pensions while the taxpayers receives less than half from their social security and they have to wait ten years longer to collect.
Is it this rotten in Denmark?
I dont get it? Where is this screwing anybody? Most pension plans reward increased salary and you would expect most employees to be at the top of their career ladder as they edge closer to retirement. And that certainly might include applying for a promotion and transfer you might not have otherwise when you were younger (say because you did not want to move your kids to a different school system) or just not want to live in a personally undesirable location for some indeterminate amount of time. Several years from retirement, with the kids on their own, you might decide to go for it as a way to improve your retirement picture.
So unless someone was getting a promotion they did not qualify for, this is a non-issue and just some knee jerk attitude that somehow people that work for the government (read the public) just sit on their ass all day as opposed to people that work for the private sector. That attitude is not just not justified by anything approaching rationality!
ljames, do you have a problem reading? My points were obvious but you totally ignored them.
How long have you worked for the government?
IJames, You don’t get it or you have a vested interest in your remarks, IMHO.
If your pension plan used the same formula as Social Security, which you have a choice not to be in, your retirement income would be 1/3 of what it is because of PERS, because the taxpayers of Ca. pay for it.
ljames, maybe you don’t have a government job, just a Ph.D in psychology or sociology or better yet a Ed.D.