For nearly 30 years, he was a police officer in the city of Vallejo […] He was able to retire at 50 with a pension and family health insurance benefits worth a total of a little over $180,000 a year.
Cop retires at 50 with a pension worth millions.
He’s not working, but making an income that is easily in the top 5% of the nation.
(BTW: Who was saying up-thread that a police officer retiring at 50 was “bullshit?”)
Vallejo’s financial situation is desperate, city services were cut by 40%, city is still on verge of bankruptcy. Cost of pensions alone is 30% and rising – yes, thirty percent of the budget pays for people who aren’t even working for the city.
Retired cop in PBS interview did have to take a cut. He now has to pay for his own health insurance. Income was reduced by $769/month, or about 5%.
Cop complains about it, as if it will be a struggle to live on $170K per year. Would rather current employees (and therefore the quality of current services) to take the hit:
“Where I think that they should’ve started to make changes is with the current employees. Those people still have an opportunity to plan for these things in the future.”
Yup, kick the can down the road, into the face of the next generation.[/quote]
First, here is my quote. Note how your poor reading comprehension skills have, once again, prevented you from grasping what was written.
[quote=CA renter][quote=harvey]Wow. Not a hint of compassion in your posts.
There are lot of Macks out there, on the golf courses, in the RV parks and marinas — yes they’re out there. They can be easy to miss — their youth masks their retiree status — but they’re out there. Victims, all of them.
What about Mack? Who will rescue Mack from Wall Street?[/quote]
Bullshit. Very few can retire at 50 with full benefits because they’d have to start at 20 to do so. [/quote]
Now, for why Vallejo has so many financial problems…it’s not because of pensions. EVERYBODY has to take a hit, including the retirees, because of problems that were brought on by base closures and the recession (and the bursting of the Fed’s bubbles…we’re in another one right now). Is is not the public employees’ job to take the hit for everyone else. All stakeholders have to share in the pain. From your own PBS link:
“RICK KARR: Gomes had a front row seat on the city council as Vallejo went broke in 2008. The city never recovered from the blow its economy took in 1996, when the Mare Island Naval Shipyard closed there and thousands of residents lost jobs. The additional burden of the recession was too much for the municipal budget. For Gomes, the worst part of the crisis was just before the city filed for bankruptcy.”
……….
BTW, how many people have personally lost $769/month in order to fund someone else’s pension? Again, your post proves that the public employee is the one taking the largest hit, by far.
I have always said that changes are needed with respect to benefit formulas and retroactive pension increases, especially for those who get retiree healthcare when newer employees do not (benefit parity between older retirees and current employees). And I’ve long said that contribution rates have to increase, even for employees. They have been increasing, as noted in my comment about PEPRA, and also in my comments about changes in negotiations that result in a net reduction in compensation for public employees (effectively increasing their contribution rates by reducing other pay/benefits to pay for it). They are also working on *legal* legislative changes that would increase direct employee contribution amounts for employees.
Pensions do need to be managed wisely, but ALL aspects of government finance need to be managed wisely, and they are not (again, reference links in phasters last post…and there are many, many more examples of this).
