Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Munson]

Saw that too. Interesting. I wonder how many people butchered spelling her name too

[Hawk]

I wonder if any indepedendents will swing if the senate numbers remain close.

[Sgt PSN]

Yes.. because those firefighters in bumblefarg suburb New Jersey are making 6 figures a year for 35 years of retirement after only 20 years of service.  I hear there's a lot of dangerous high rise, five alarm fires in those areas.  Give me a break. 

Taxes pay for CEO's salaries nowadays?

LOL.  The avg salary for a firefighter in NJ is $46,000 a year. 

The ones who make 6 figures a year are the station captains, town/county/city chiefs and those who fill out various positions in the firefighting hierarchy.  And just like any other field, be it business, public service, military, etc, there are far fewer fat cats at the top then there are worker bees beneath them. 

Also, firefighter pensions are structured in a very similar manner as the military.  20 years of service starts with a 50% pension and increases with each year served beyond that.  Should you serve for 40 years, you receive 70% with a 1% increase for every year of service over 40 years.  Mandatory retirement age is 65.  However, not everyone gets to serve for 40+ years as there are service limitations that force an overwhelmingly large portion of firefighters to retire anywhere between 20 and 30 years of service. 

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/epbam/exhibits/handbook/pfrshndbk.pdf

[Hawk]

I wasn't citing New Jersey as a concrete example.  When I'm not lazy I'll pull numbers from actual states where the public sector absolutely abuses the pension and benefits system.   IE see states like California, where their economy is crumbling.  Just off my head I can bring up the small town in CA where the average income was 40,000, but the city council was caking off.

[Sgt PSN]

I wasn't citing New Jersey as a concrete example.

orly?

Yes.. because those firefighters in bumblefarg suburb New Jersey are making 6 figures a year for 35 years of retirement after only 20 years of service. 

Then you should probably not mention New Jersey if you don't want to use it as a concrete example. 

I wasn't citing New Jersey as a concrete example.  When I'm not lazy I'll pull numbers from actual states where the public sector absolutely abuses the pension and benefits system.   IE see states like California, where their economy is crumbling.  Just off my head I can bring up the small town in CA where the average income was 40,000, but the city council was caking off.

Now you're talking about politicians, not cops and firefighters. 

[Sgt PSN]

nm

[Hawk]

Now you're talking about politicians, not cops and firefighters. 

No firefighters and cops there too, which is why pension reform has been a hot-button issue there.  Especially, noteworthy is how they spike their salaries right before retirement in order to boost their pension as well.   Like I said, I'll pull numbers when I'm not laying in bed trying to find a zombie show on demand.

[Hawk]

There's a chance for a 49/49 tie... with the 2 indepedents.   

Go Joe Biden?

[Hawk]

Yes.. because those firefighters in bumblefarg suburb New Jersey are making 6 figures a year for 35 years of retirement after only 20 years of service.  I hear there's a lot of dangerous high rise, five alarm fires in those areas.  Give me a break. 

Taxes pay for CEO's salaries nowadays?

LOL.  The avg salary for a firefighter in NJ is $46,000 a year. 

The ones who make 6 figures a year are the station captains, town/county/city chiefs and those who fill out various positions in the firefighting hierarchy.  And just like any other field, be it business, public service, military, etc, there are far fewer fat cats at the top then there are worker bees beneath them. 

Also, firefighter pensions are structured in a very similar manner as the military.  20 years of service starts with a 50% pension and increases with each year served beyond that.  Should you serve for 40 years, you receive 70% with a 1% increase for every year of service over 40 years.  Mandatory retirement age is 65.  However, not everyone gets to serve for 40+ years as there are service limitations that force an overwhelmingly large portion of firefighters to retire anywhere between 20 and 30 years of service. 

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/epbam/exhibits/handbook/pfrshndbk.pdf

There's cities where that pension compensation is 90 percent in a much shorter timeframe than 40 years.

[MDS]

the least the republicans could have done was got sharron angle and witchface o'donnell elected for comedy sake

but no they take the house and the oompa loompa face buffoon is the speaker

great. whatever. politics suck.

[Sgt PSN]

Cops and firefighters can't spike their salaries, that can only be done by members of the local/state governments.  Now I'm not going to say that some fire chief who has been around for 40 years isn't working to local counsel behind closed doors to give him a hefty pay raise before retirement, but he still doesn't have the final say.  You're anger is mostly misdirected.  If I were a tax payer in a town like that, I'd be more pissed at the people who gave him the fat raise than I would be at the fire chief for actually getting it. 

[Sgt PSN]

Yes.. because those firefighters in bumblefarg suburb New Jersey are making 6 figures a year for 35 years of retirement after only 20 years of service.  I hear there's a lot of dangerous high rise, five alarm fires in those areas.  Give me a break. 

Taxes pay for CEO's salaries nowadays?

LOL.  The avg salary for a firefighter in NJ is $46,000 a year. 

The ones who make 6 figures a year are the station captains, town/county/city chiefs and those who fill out various positions in the firefighting hierarchy.  And just like any other field, be it business, public service, military, etc, there are far fewer fat cats at the top then there are worker bees beneath them. 

Also, firefighter pensions are structured in a very similar manner as the military.  20 years of service starts with a 50% pension and increases with each year served beyond that.  Should you serve for 40 years, you receive 70% with a 1% increase for every year of service over 40 years.  Mandatory retirement age is 65.  However, not everyone gets to serve for 40+ years as there are service limitations that force an overwhelmingly large portion of firefighters to retire anywhere between 20 and 30 years of service. 

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/epbam/exhibits/handbook/pfrshndbk.pdf

There's cities where that pension compensation is 90 percent in a much shorter timeframe than 40 years.

Link. 

[Hawk]

John Woolfolk


jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/11/2009 06:36:50 PM PDT
Updated: 07/11/2009 11:59:04 PM PDT


Veteran San Jose Fire Capt. Randy Sekany hung up his helmet in December at the age of 53. But he didn't leave behind his $100,000-a-year-plus salary. Instead, he joined the ranks of hundreds of former city workers making six-figure sums, with a pension that will pay him $121,510 this year.

He is one of 44 firefighters and police officers who left the city last year alone with six-figure pensions, thanks to a controversial retirement system that is receiving renewed scrutiny. Even as the cash-strapped city cuts services, it is contributing more than ever to shore up the pension fund amid the market meltdown.

Under the system, San Jose's veteran public safety workers don't have to be retired for long before their pensions exceed their former salaries. Depending on how long they worked for the city, they can retire with 90 percent of their salaries while receiving guaranteed, 3 percent annual cost-of-living increases — while private-sector workers are seeing their 401(k)s gutted by market losses.

All told, San Jose's $100,000-plus pension club includes 256 retired officers and firefighters and 34 other city workers.

"It's absolutely outrageous," said Jerry Mungai, a San Jose resident who retired from Cypress Semiconductor and is frustrated that while city retirees collect hefty pensions, his street is "cracked and crumbling" and no one picks up the phone when he calls City Hall.

Through contract negotiations over the past decade, firefighter and police officer pensions rose to 90 percent of their former salaries after 30 years on the job, up from the maximum 75 percent they once shared with the rest of the city's workers. Union negotiators cited a need to keep pace with inflation and the state retirement system.

Records compiled at the request of the Mercury News show that effort has created different classes of San Jose retirees: Half the officers and firefighters who retired last year will make $100,000 or more annually, while fewer than 7 percent of those who retired a decade ago will see their inflation-adjusted pensions reach that mark.

Government employee pensions have drawn heightened scrutiny in San Jose and elsewhere as officials divert tax money from public services into pension funds to meet the mounting costs. CalPERS, the retirement system for state workers, has seen costs soar in the past decade, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding changes to the benefits.

Even as it trims library hours and hikes fees for residents, San Jose is contributing $131 million into the city's $3.2 billion employee retirement system now, up from $125 million last year. City officials say next year's tab could rise an additional $52 million to help offset more than $1 billion in recent pension fund investment losses.

San Jose leaders are hearing from many residents like Mungai, who chafe at costly retirement packages for city workers amid the city's eight-year run of red ink. The 71-year-old retired financial manager said he has no pension and lives on savings, investments and his $24,000 a year from Social Security.

In fact, only 12 percent of retirees from private businesses have defined-benefit pensions to complement Social Security, according to the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute. Their average annual pension is $13,083.

San Jose's growing pension costs have prompted the city manager to suggest paring back retirement benefits for new hires, but the unions must agree to such changes and so far are balking. Sekany, who remains president of the firefighters union, and other city retirees note that they don't receive Social Security and that, as employees, they helped pay for their pensions.

"Our members got benefits that allow them to maintain the lifestyle they had as an active employee," said Sekany, who spent 28 years with the city. "They certainly don't become millionaires as a result of their pensions."

But the retirement benefits even for the city's civilian work force still far exceed those available to private-sector employees, whose taxes guarantee government pensions. The average pension for retired San Jose workers is almost three times the average Social Security retirement benefit. For former officers and firefighters, it's more than five times as high.

City retirees also can get free health care. Not only that, but San Jose employees can retire much earlier — in their early to mid-50s — while privately employed workers must wait until their late 60s to collect full Social Security benefits.

That has allowed many former San Jose officials to continue in other careers while collecting city pensions. The $100,000-plus pension club includes former San Jose Police Chief Bill Lansdowne, now chief in San Diego, and Carl Mosher, the former environmental services director, who is now deputy airport director for Sacramento County. (See Internal Affairs, Page 3B.)

Not all those with six-figure pensions were top city officials. Those who retired in December and stand to receive more than $100,000 in retirement this year include lower-ranking fire engineers as well as a police sergeant.

But the records also portray a vastly different scope of benefits between recently retired officers and firefighters and those whose service ended long ago. Public safety pensions have grown considerably in recent years, while those for other workers have risen only slightly.

Specifically, the Mercury News analysis found:


The average police and firefighter pension today for the 76 who retired in 1998 is $72,942 — still about twice the average for the city's 2,520 retirees who worked in other departments.


For the 90 public safety workers who retired last year, the average pension is $98,541. Half of last year's public safety retirees will get more than $100,000, compared with just five of those who retired a decade ago.


All told, 18 percent of the city's retired officers and firefighters have six-figure pensions.

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, pension formulas for San Jose officers and firefighters were the same as for the rest of the city's work force: 2.5 percent of salary multiplied by the number of years in service, to a maximum of 75 percent at three decades on the job. By comparison, Social Security pays 41 percent of a middle-income workers' earnings.

But officer and firefighter benefits began to increase in the late 1990s — the result, city officials say, of binding arbitration approved by voters in 1980. The measure was pitched at the time as a way to settle disputed labor contracts, but arbitrators generally have sided with the employees on financial matters.

Daniel Finn, a diesel mechanic and spokesman for the City Labor Alliance representing San Jose's 11 employee unions, said that while some of the city's civilian workers grumble about the increased benefits for officers and firefighters, most "realize that public safety does a job the rest of us don't do. Police officers get shot at, and firemen have to run into burning buildings."

Union and retiree representatives say benefit increases were needed because inflation was shrinking pension values. In 1963, when Lawrence Campbell retired as a fire battalion chief after 31 years, he drew a $5,011-a-year pension — worth $35,021 in today's dollars. But his actual pension now, even with cost-of-living adjustments, is just $28,894. He is among 82 retired firefighters and officers — and 1,094 other former city workers — whose pensions total less than $30,000 a year.

Ken Heredia, who retired as a firefighter in 1999 and is a director of the Association of Retired San Jose Police Officers and Firefighters, said residents outraged over top officials' six-figure pensions don't understand that "the vast majority of cops and firefighters never saw anything like that."

Union leaders say reduced benefits for new workers would kill morale, with recent hires resenting their better-compensated peers. And they note the benefits they enjoy today were negotiated with the city, often in exchange for employees making concessions in compensation or working conditions. Sekany added that firefighters are willing to work with the city on other ways to save money.

Councilman Ash Kalra, who also serves as a pension board trustee, said that because reduced benefits for new hires won't deliver any savings for years, it's better to seek cooperation with the unions on other money-saving ideas.

"We need to have help from the unions if we're going to get through the next few years."

But Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio said the city will have to reduce benefit levels for new hires to fund services for residents.

"The current benefits," he said, "are unsustainable."




Read more: http://unlawflcombatnt.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pensionssocialsecurity&action=display&thread=5419#ixzz14CFJq1Jv

[Hawk]

Tried to link the original article from the paper, but it was no longer on their server.

[Sgt PSN]

Didn't read the whole thing because, well, I'm tired and ready for sleep.  But I read the first couple of paragraphs and that's absolutely deplorable and there was definitely some back room drug deals being made.  I'd also speculate that it's not a widespread practice around the country either and that the majority of cops and firefighters retire after earning a moderate salary and receive a nice pension.