[quote=livinincali][quote=CA renter]
And your claim that public safety workers “game the system” to enhance retirement benefits? While some do (mostly state employees), most cannot. Overtime is NOT calculated in pension benefit formulas for many (most?) municipal employees. New employees are specifically prohibited from using OT to “spike” pensions (and I think it should apply across the board).
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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. People like to game the system unfortunately, and defined benefit contribution plans like the ones that are currently designed encourage that unethical but possibly legal behavior.[/quote]
I agree with you on the disability stuff. While most are legitimate claims, I think that some people do stretch things in order to qualify for this. IMO, the 50% tax-free income should not be allowed, especially if the person gets retiree healthcare…so their healthcare costs are covered, witch would be the only legitimate reason for this tax-free status if they had to pay for their own healthcare costs in retirement.
The other issues might have been a problem with the record-keeping system. I know for a fact that the system can sometimes double-count shifts when the employee enters a different code for a shift; it’s not intentional in the cases that I’m aware of. It should be audited on an ongoing basis (and it usually is) to make sure this doesn’t happen.
