Sunday, January 30, 2011

Central Falls, RI is 33 years ahead of Encinitas



... and it ain't pretty:


In 1972, the city created a new pension plan for public-safety officers that allowed them to retire after 20 years and earn 50% of their final year's salary thereafter.

50%? How quaint! Encinitas firefighters get 60% after 20 years at 55 and 105% of their last year's (spiked) pay if they stay 35 years (plus cost-of-living increases, of course!). And it's not just firefighters -- all city employees get a similar deal with just a trivial 10% less than firefighters. We're going to have an army of city workers retiring in their 50's, living into their 80's or worse, and collecting decades of annual payments that are bigger than most working Encinitas residents' salaries!

How are we supposed to pay for that? Well, here's how it played out in Central Falls:


Over time, such labor costs have swamped the city's budget. In 1991, the state took over the schools because the city could no longer afford to fund them. But that didn't solve the problem of costly and restrictive collective-bargaining agreements.

Last year, labor costs made up roughly 70% of Central Falls's budget. [...] Unable to pay its bills, Central Falls wanted to declare bankruptcy, but the state intervened and put the town into receivership.

Retired judge Mark Pfeiffer was appointed last summer as receiver to review and fix the city's finances. His first move was to strip the mayor of his powers. Then he hiked property and car taxes by nearly 20%, and cut labor costs by $900,000. Those tax hikes have merely driven more people out of town: City officials tell me nearly half of the houses are boarded up.

And our city council thinks sports bars and train whistles are the most important issues it needs to address.

6 comments:

  1. Part of a recent news article heading was about possible legislation to help states and agencies get around bankruptcy as a relieve to the pension problem.

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  2. The thing that you don't get is you can't be a firefighter until your 70. You can be a cop out there fighting people on the street at 60. They retire early because their bodies give out. They aren't your pencil pushing city lawyers. They usually die earlier also.

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  3. The thing that you don't get is you can't be a firefighter until your 70.

    You can't be a professional athlete, a construction worker, or a stunt man until you're 70 either. And yet none of these people get taxpayer-funded annual pay for life that is greater than the annual salary of most people in their community. Most professional athletes go on to second careers in sales, management, small business, etc.

    Cities and counties have survived for hundreds of years without giving firefighters outrageous pensions. The pension ripoff is a relatively new scam.

    They usually die earlier also. Wrong. Calpers shows that firefighters typically live into their 80's, exactly like other retirees, and receive benefits for longer, because they retire earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The thing that you don't get is you can't be a firefighter until your 70.

    You can't be a professional athlete, a construction worker, or a stunt man until you're 70 either. And yet none of these people get taxpayer-funded annual pay for life that is greater than the annual salary of most people in their community. Most professional athletes go on to second careers in sales, management, small business, etc.

    Cities and counties have survived for hundreds of years without giving firefighters outrageous pensions. The pension ripoff is a relatively new scam.

    They usually die earlier also.

    Wrong. Calpers shows that firefighters typically live into their 80's, exactly like other retirees, and receive benefits for longer, because they retire earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 'Collective Bargaining', which doesn't allow employers to walk away from the table and tell unions to go to hell, is not bargaining, its extortion.

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  6. don't forget the health care liabilities. I didn't even think about this until right now. Does the new federal health care plan override those plans, or do all the private workers go on the obama plan and all the government workers get the platinum plan?

    ReplyDelete