Qotsaautopilot

I don’t feel it’s absurd. The problem is how many people it’s being paid to. 20 years is half a career not a full one. Retiring at age 40 with a full pension is what’s nuts. If you had to put in 30+ like most of the working world then the pension obligations would be cut way down

CrowneVic

Nobody is getting a regular retirement at 40, dude. The youngest public safety retirements were 50 under the old system. Unless you were grandfathered in before the change, the minimum age has gone way up, and the percentage pay formula of per year of service has gone down.

For a cop or firefighter hired in his early 20s, that equates to nearly 30 years of service IF he retires at the earliest possible opportunity. What they’re getting for that length of service is really not too much different than senior military officers are getting for similar levels of service.

On top of that, part of the argument for the pension levels is that their life expectancy after retirement is well below the average population after doing those jobs for so long, especially cops. So they really don’t get to enjoy nearly as many years of those pensions as your typical person would.

Also, to say everybody is retiring with 100k pension is very disingenuous. The formula is based on number of years of service, and you would have to have A LOT of years of service under the old system to retire with that much money. It’s far more difficult to do now under the new system.

The real problem with ridiculous pensions comes at the executive level, i.e., city managers, police and fire chiefs, captains, lieutenants, etc. They are able to negotiate pension packages outside of the regular formulas, so they can retire from one place, get hired somewhere else at a high level staff position, retire again in two or three years, and keep repeating that process, getting a new pension on top of the old pension every step of the way. That is what needs to be reformed.

Excargodog

https://www.lbbusinessjournal.com/as...e-200000-club/





Now of course, that’s baseline. Everybody rolls all their vacation and unused sick leave and any overtime they can get into those last three years to drive the pension as high as possible.

Profane Kahuna

I know a few people retiring under the old system in California. I’m glad they are getting what was promised to them, but it is breaking the bank.

Taxpayers should be paying for their current Police and Fire service operational budget, not retirement accounts that should have been funded years ago.

Those extremely generous pensions were promised by the boomers but the payments were deferred for decades and are now coming due. They basically socially engineered a way to promise pensions but create a 20-30 window of taxpayers (themselves) not footing the bill.

ShyGuy

That should be changed. Not fair to taxpayers that they play the system like that to inflate earnings for the last three years.

And no offense, no public official should be making $200k in an annual pension payout when they retire in California.

rickair7777

I agree that those who abuse their bodies and risk their lives for the public should get a reasonable retirement.

I agree that it's going to be larger than a private-sector equivalent because fire/police/mil almost always have no choice but to retire earlier than private-sector (which typically can go to 70+ if they want/need to).

But I think comparing senior military to rank-and-file fire/police is apples-to-oranges. Senior mil are paid decently because it's necessary for retention... those folks are in big demand outside. Senior mil (or any mil) almost invariably get jobs after "retirement" to maintain their QOL because they take a BIG paycut at retirement (even a very senior guy with 75% of base after 30 years loses ALL of his allowances and bonuses so he's really less than 50% of pre-retirement) . Unless they want to sit in a double-wide in AK, watching cable TV, and drinking themselves to a quick grave.

If governments are paying big bucks to fire/police because it's free-market, and they'll go get a job as a rent-a-cop or private fireman for twice what the city pays, so be it. But that's not the case, their pay is a bit distorted by their unions. I'd prefer they got reduced pension to age 65, then the full deal kicks in. That way they could follow the mil model, go get a job of some sort to finish out their working years. It's unseemly for government employees to get paid lavishly to not work prior to age 65.

And your pension should be based on longer-term earnings, so you can't just slam-dunk your last three years and double your pension. Also key to base salary/pay, with OT excluded (they put their OT in an IRA or gov 401k equivalent if desired).

Peacock

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics...240415596.html

$415k per year pension? Seems reasonable.

OOfff

If you’re going to care this much about California, you should probably update your knowledge of CA pensions to 2013 and later: https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/abou...ion-reform-act

rickair7777

Yes, I'm familiar with it (my wife's eligible).

It's a start, but the state still has no way to pay for it's current obligations.

OOfff

then why are you talking about “slam dunking” your last few years with overtime?