Here's my buck-fifty on the issue, LOL:
First of all I graduated from college in Long Beach.
On the retirement issue. Here is how the pension system works. Our system is defined benfefit. With that defined benefits comes defined contributions with additional funding required if either the market is performing poorly or if the employer had decided to underfund thier liability. The employee has no say so in how much is contributed. 9% of my salary is contributed into my retirement account, come hell or high water.
Now for the employer it is different. The employer, this time being the state, is scheduled to contribute 3%. However, if the market is doing well they pay much less and during the entire 1990's it was pretty much around 0.05%. Then came the recession. All of a sudden there was a defecit accumulating as a result of underfunding on the part of the state. So in effect there is a baloon payment due on the retirement. This is as a result of them failing to pay in 3% every year during the 1990's. What they did instead when thier liability into the system dropped was take the money for many types of special projects that no doubt got many of the loosers re-elected instead of either saving the money anyway or giving it it PERS, our retirement system administrator, to place in the market.
PERS is a tremendous organization. It is the fifth largest pension system in the USA covering employees only from the State of California. The sad thing about this is that PERS has stated that if the legislature and the governor had chosen to pay the 3% anyway during the 1990's and into the early 2000's the programs would be "superfunded" by 2010. Meaning that the employee and employer would pay nothing so long as benefit levels did not increase.
So instead of admitting failure on the elected offical's part, old Arnie has chosen to attack our benefits. He states that he wants a program that mirror's the private sector through 401K. Most of my friends that work in the private sector whom have 401k's are working for employers that match at least a portion of thier contributions. His rhetoric does not hold water with me as they have a system that mirror's the private sector. The only exception is that they can choose to not contribute based upon what is convenient and not even think about the consequences to the employee.
The part that really gets me angry about this is that right now if I die in the line of duty, my family will recieve a $150K death benefit, which I pay the premium for. The governor wanted to so away with it as part of his proposal! The sad thing about it is that the governor has the meat-hooks of some republican hard-liners into him on this issue and he is making statements without telling the complete truth. I have met the governor, I believe he is a good person trying to do what is right. But on this issue, he has listened to all the wrong people.
Ok, now I feel better now that I have vented. Remember, you asked first. LOL!
John
