[quote=bearishgurl]
Thanks for the clarification, TG. You explained it better than I could. Yes, lifetime healthcare allowances were never guaranteed to “Tier A” SD County retirees (SDCERA members who retired or took deferred retirement since 3/31/02). I took deferred retirement prior to that date and thus am guaranteed a healthcare allowance (HIR) for life under “Tier I.” However, my pension was calculated on a much less generous formula than “Tier A” recipients, which was bargained for and in place at the time of my leaving county employ.
City (SD) MUST honor all DROP contracts they made with prospective retirees (SDCERS members) who agreed to work the required five more years for them (to prevent a mass exodus and “brain drain”). However, all of the affected SDCERS members should be fully “retired” by mid to late 2016. I know several who will finally be gone by June 2016.
Newbie Pigg phaster is in the habit of posting multiple (mostly dated) links in effort to incite public “outrage” over contracts made long ago with current and former CA local government employees.
Move on, folks …. there’s nothing to see here.[/quote]
huh…
first of all seems like Déjà vu (and perhaps a case of sour grapes?)
[quote=bearishgurl]
September 2, 2014 – 2:02pm.
Uh, well, I don’t think our fact-skimming newbie, Phaster, had a chance to see this recent piece from the UT (hint: google SDCERA and it comes up first :)):
…. For the past decade, San Diego County and its employees paid 100 percent or more of their annually required contribution to the SDCERA retirement fund. Consistent employee and employer contributions over the years have laid a foundation for investment gains and asset growth. SDCERA’s investment strategy helps the employer’s budgeting process and stabilizes employer costs by reducing the volatility of returns and steadily achieving the rate of return needed to fund the benefit.
At $10 billion, the SDCERA fund is able to pursue certain investment strategies that larger plans like CalPERS cannot access and smaller plans do not have the resources to deploy. SDCERA’s investment strategy is purposely designed to be no riskier than traditional pension fund asset allocation strategies. Risk-parity and trend strategies, which utilize leverage, are limited to 25 percent of the SDCERA portfolio, not the entire set of portfolio assets. The other 75 percent of the portfolio is managed using traditional asset allocation and rebalancing approaches…
[quote=Wall Street Journal] San Diego County Pension Chief to Resign
By Dan Fitzpatrick
March 19, 2015 6:22 p.m. ET
The chief executive of San Diego County’s pension system announced he would resign at the end of the month, bringing fresh turmoil for the $10.4 billion fund.
San Diego County Employees Retirement Association said in a statement that CEO Brian White and the board had “amicably agreed” that Mr. White’s tenure of nearly two decades would end March 30. David Wescoe, former head of the city of San Diego’s pension fund, will take over as CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement.
A Sdcera spokesman said Mr. White made the decision to resign and that he and the board had been discussing the move “over the course of several months.” Mr. White said in a statement that “Sdcera has enjoyed great success, which I expect will continue” and that “serving as Sdcera’s CEO has been an incredibly rewarding professional experience.”
The exit of the system’s longtime leader caps a period of strife for a fund that manages money on behalf of more than 39,657 active and former public employees.
Board members and staff members spent much of the past year wrangling over an outside firm’s investment strategy that involved the use of derivatives to boost performance. The controversial approach was the subject of a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal.
The board voted in November to find a new internal investment chief rather than rely on an outside manager for that role.
or could there be an ECONOMIC INCENTIVE as to why you want others to move along and not question the news article why “City pensioners get ’13th check’ bonus”
Well, I’m representative of the typical local Suzy Q. Gubment-Pensioner with a fairly low income. But every time I look at listings the places I WOULD be interested in fleeing to (wine country and mtns, in and out of state), I’m finding the home prices to be just as much or higher than where I currently live … and utilities higher or much higher. And I don’t owe very much on my current home … relative to its value …. and could pay it off anytime I so choose to. And I have a running vehicle and know how to get on the interstate ….[/quote]
given this information the (re)action seems no different than that of a CEO of a tabacco company who has an economic incentive to keep the public in the dark about the public health costs/dangers of smoking as long as possible AND ethically is par for the course given what another pigg disclosed about typical local Gubment-Pensioner(s)
[quote=livinincali]
October 1, 2014 – 8:00am.
I worked on a project for RISK management about 12 years ago, which is the San Diego’s self funded disability insurance office. What firefighter and cops did at retirement was pretty bad. That was more a case of disability fraud, where if you retire under disability 50% of you pension income is tax free. But there were crazy things in the payroll system. People claiming to work more than 24 hours in a day. People claiming light duty (aka a disability claim) and regular duty in the same day.
[/quote]
seems everything also dovetails (WRT possible motives and belief in the existing faulty design of public pensions) which is outlined in the Handbook of Frauds, Scams, and Swindles: Failures of Ethics in Leadershipedited by Serge Matulich, David M. Currie
in science the goal is to understand fundamental truths and the mindset is to examine the honest “cause and effect” (which is the intellectual/moral framework I try my best to operate in)
as I see things the scientific method is the most objective way to look at an issue since there is little or no regard to the calculus of economics or politics when looking for the “cause and effect”
more often than not when the human emotional calculus of economics vs politics are included, people cheat/lie/steal to obtain an objective (i.e. deluded themselves into believing in a corrupt $hit for brains game plan is viable/sustainable because the math is all but ignored along with understanding the context of the object designed)
it would be like VW telling their customers and regulators to just believe our ads because they state we produce clean burning diesel engines BUT ignore all the evidence to the contrary that there was a design flaw and cover up for many years till we were caught in a lie…
so if you or others care to check the dates of the articles, you stated others should ignore, note that the date I post a link to an article is right around the time I find it while skimming some news source (aka THE EFFECT), and the other link corresponds to what to me looks like (THE CAUSE) which might have happened years ago!
