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CalPERS is going to look again at adjusting its investment forecast, a move that could increase taxpayer contributions while ramping up the political heat on public pension funds in California. Just a year ago, the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System ignored recommendations from senior staff to cut its forecast a quarter-point, to 7.5 percent. Yet on Tuesday, senior actuary Alan Milligan said CalPERS staff will make another recommendation to the board next month. He didn't say what the recommendation will be. But other big public pension funds have been cutting their forecasts in recent years to reflect...

CalPERS refuses to sell its long-term care insurance to the same-sex partners of state workers, on the grounds that federal law doesn't allow it. Now a judge in Oakland seems ready to overturn that federal ban. Last week, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken refused to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against CalPERS and the U.S. government over the California pension fund's long-term care program. In her ruling, she suggested the ban could be unconstitutional. While the California Public Employees' Retirement System extends most benefits to same-sex couples, it has denied long-term care coverage to the same-sex spouses or domestic partners of...

This story isn’t very complicated. In 1999 California’s public employee unions took control of the Golden State from a weak sycophantic Democrat Governor, the now infamous Grey Davis. The unions instructed their servants in the Legislature to create the California Public Employees Retirement System known as CalPERS. With CalPERS. Davis and his Party purchased perpetual control of California’s government through never ending union support. And why not; CalPERS gives state employees lavish pay, benefits and pensions amounting to 90% of yearly salaries. Not surprisingly Californians knew little or nothing about the dirty secret imbedded in the CalPERS bill (SB 400)...

California taxpayers should ask themselves, in the words of Clint Eastwood's famous movie character, "Do I feel lucky?" We're not staring down the barrel of "Dirty Harry" Callahan's gun wondering whether there's a bullet in the chamber. Instead, we're gambling our financial future on whether public pension fund investments will surpass reasonable expectations. If state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, union leaders and the state's largest government employee retirement funds have their way, they'll continue betting against the odds. It's not surprising. It's not their money at risk. They won't have to cover the losses. Taxpayers will. Last week, a study led...

Back in April of this year I wrote about the covert bailout that was buried in the Obamacare bill which gives $5 billion of taxpayer money to unions, states (for public employees) and corporations for health care coverage for retirees aged between 55 and 64. The program is called the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program or ERRP. The UAW is the largest single beneficiary, receiving over 200 million dollars. General Motors also gets a piece of the pork with about a 20 million dollar cut. A recent report by the Washington Examiner identifies early retirees (many of whom are being...

CalPERS rolling out new computer system late and at higher cost California Public Employees' Retirement System officials hope the complex $507-million project for tracking data of 1.6 million members will work as planned, though they expect start-up problems. Reporting from Sacramento — At nearly twice the estimated cost and a year late, a new computer system for the state's giant public pension fund is scheduled to go live Monday, tracking the contributions, healthcare coverage and retirement benefits for 1.6 million members. Officials at the California Public Employees' Retirement System hope the complex $507-million project, dubbed My CalPERS, will work as...

The fortunes of California are sinking fast. We need not imagine what our lives would be like if the Democrats take top to bottom control of our lives ever again. The unmitigated disaster that is California shows us what America’s future would be if Democrats and their union masters ever regain control of our government. When disgraced and recalled California Democrat Governor Gray Davis quietly signed SB 400 a bill funding the California Public Employees’ Retirement System in 1999,he set in motion a nightmare for taxpayers and sugarplums dancing in the empty heads of the state’s unionized workers. Bill SB...

The chief executives of CalPERS and CalSTRS along with Controller John Chiang and Treasurer Bill Lockyer are asking the Brown administration to overhaul the state's travel meal reimbursement rates to help accommodate for trips to expensive locales. Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2011/08/california-officials-seek-higher-rates-meal-reimbursements.html#ixzz1U6X38OST

Wounded by the CalPERS bribery scandal and other problems, a New Jersey pharmaceutical-benefits company is being sold. Medco Health Solutions Inc., one of the giants of the drug-benefit industry, on Thursday agreed to a $29.1 billion takeover by rival Express Scripts Inc. Such a deal would have been unthinkable a few months ago, when Medco was flying high. But the New Jersey company ran into a series of problems that began with its entanglement in the CalPERS bribery case. "This year has been a head-spinner for this (Medco) management team, starting out with the CalPERS issues," said investment analyst Arthur...

When Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans failed to reach agreement on closing the state budget deficit, they also failed to resolve several budget-related issues – most prominently what, if anything, should be done to rein in public employees' pensions. Pension costs are not yet a huge component of the state budget because the vast majority of its funds are given to others to spend. But they are huge in local governments, especially cities, which spend most of their money on personnel – especially high-wage police officers and firefighters – and face rapidly escalating pension costs. Republicans wanted to scale back...

A desert site in Arizona sold for $32.5 million this week, five years after the California Public Employees’ Retirement System paid $400 million for the land. “Of all the speculative deals I’ve seen here, this was right at the top,” McDonnell said. Calpers had investments valued at $209.7 million in MW Housing Partners III June 30, 2007. The next year, the investment had a negative market value of $102.9 million.

More shoes may be dropping at the California Public Employees' Retirement System. Forty-nine staff members, including the president and chief investment officer, have been notified they are being investigated by the Fair Political Practices Commission for possible violations of gift reporting requirements. ... some of the potential violations went back five years. The investigation grew, indirectly, out of the scandal involving outside placement agents and their allegedly corrupt links to senior CalPERS executives

Gov. Jerry Brown today issued a 12-point pension reform agenda his office says he will introduce in the Legislature "with or without Republican support." The first seven items seek to end abuses or tighten pension funding rules. The last five involve more systemic changes and are listed as "under development." PENSION REFORM PROPOSAL APPLIES TO STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS 1. Eliminate Purchase of Airtime. Would eliminate the opportunity, for all current and future employee members of all state and local retirement systems, to purchase additional retirement service credit. (RN 14777) (Note Walters, SB 522, would eliminate Air Time) 2. Prohibit...

Brown's Countdown, Day 76: Budget talks deteriorate as GOP unveils big request list State budget talks between Gov. Jerry Brown and Republican lawmakers deteriorated Friday as Republicans released a long list of proposals to overhaul California government that Democrats said had further divided the parties. According to a document Senate Republicans provided to reporters, they asked Brown for pension cuts to current and future employees, as well as changes to teacher tenure that reward performance and a hard cap on future state spending, among dozens of ideas. ... The list provided by Republicans included notations of where Brown and Democratic...

California tax payers just took a huge punch in the nose from the same actuaries who provided the cover for state politicians to spike public employee retirement benefits. The latest shocker comes from California State Controller John Chiang who yesterday unveiled a new actuarial report that shows California faces another unfunded debt of $59.9 billion to pay for retiree health and dental benefits over the next 30 years. Controller Chiang highlighted that the unfunded liability grew during the 2010 fiscal year by $8.1 billion; an amount equal to almost 25% of this year’s entire California kindergarten through high school education...

The Los Angeles Times breaks some major news this morning: In a scathing report, a former chief executive of the California public employee pension fund was accused of pressuring subordinates to invest billions of dollars of pension money with politically connected firms. A 17-month investigation also found that Federico Buenrostro Jr. — along with former pension fund board members Charles Valdes and Kurato Shimada — strong-armed a benefits firm to pay more than $4 million in fees to consultant Alfred J.R. Villalobos, who later hired Buenrostro. The report, prepared for the California Public Employees' Retirement System by Washington law firm...

In a scathing report, a former chief executive of the California public employee pension fund was accused of pressuring subordinates to invest billions of dollars of pension money with politically connected firms. A 17-month investigation also found that Federico Buenrostro Jr. -- along with former pension fund board members Charles Valdes and Kurato Shimada -- strong-armed a benefits firm to pay more than $4 million in fees to consultant Alfred J.R. Villalobos, who later hired Buenrostro. ... The findings of insider dealings at CalPERS could provide fresh ammunition to Republican lawmakers here who want Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to convert...

Just one in five U.S. pension plans has enough assets to meet obligations, a state of affairs caused largely by overly optimistic projections of investment returns that points to a range of possible scenarios, from changing benefits to pensions going broke, according to a study from Cogent Research. About 54 percent of public pensions say their current funding status is below 80 percent of what is necessary to meet their obligations, and 16 percent of the pensions are below 60 percent of what they’ll need, according to Cogent’s “Institutional Investor Brandscape” study. This shortfall is even more acute among the...

Federal regulators are investigating whether California violated securities laws and failed to provide adequate disclosure about its giant public pension fund, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. The Securities and Exchange Commission normally polices companies, but last year it brought its first enforcement action ever against a state, accusing New Jersey of securities fraud for misleading bond investors about the condition of its pension fund. The commission signaled, in its settlement with New Jersey, that it was going to look more broadly at the pension disclosures of states and cities. The fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement...

Santa Clara County's veteran fire chief, Kenneth Waldvogel, will retire at the end of the month, but the 57-year-old won't be packing up his office just yet. He'll be back on the job in January, taking home his $236,691 annual salary as a consultant -- on top of a $200,000 yearly state pension. County officials say the move gives them time to search for a new chief, but critics call the deal a classic case of "double-dipping" -- a practice that has outraged the public and frustrated lawmakers trying to rein it in.

We told you recently about a “hateful, vile” video where the union boss is portrayed as an out-of-control Hitler, essentially calling for the blood of taxpayers if that’s what it takes to finance his big fat pension. “L’Aristocracy de CalPERS” mines the same ground — “Thousands of retired government employees are getting pensions of over $100,000 per year, and us taxpayers have to pay for them,” the filmmakers say — but it does so with a good bit more humor, and a good bit less “vileness,” if you will. Using luscious, lavish, lascivious scenes from “Dangerous Liaisons” (the story of...

Click the link for the vide and see below for details on this breaking news.

By winning a deal last week to scale back pension benefits for public employees, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger beat one of his most formidable opponents: CalPERS. Schwarzenegger and his aides have hammered the California Public Employees' Retirement System over the past 18 months, citing its steep investment losses and its role in raising pension benefits a decade earlier. The administration painted a portrait of a pension fund that refused to look its problems squarely in the eye. The fact that CalPERS needed an extra $600 million from state taxpayers this year – to help it cope with its losses from 2008...

California’s public pension crisis is a lot worse than anyone suspected and threatens to bankrupt the state if investment rates fail, says a report released today by the California Center for Public Policy. The report says that the state’s tax-paid pensions have made defacto millionaires out of most of California’s employees by the time they reach their late 50s. “Whether the standard is salary, working conditions, benefits or especially pensions, public employees in California receive compensation far in excess of what workers in the private sector do,” says the report. “It is illiberal and unjust.” State public employees are among...

Ok, Ron, now what? Investor Ron Burkle on Tuesday suffered a double loss in his fight against Barnes & Noble. Shareholders beat back his proposals to elect him and two other director nominees, and his suggestion to raise the threshold for the company’s poison pill that has been the source of tension between Burkle and the bookseller. Burkle is the second-largest holder of Barnes & Noble shares, and so far he isn’t going quietly. In a statement, his Yucaipa Cos. blamed the loss of the shareholder vote on an “insurmountable insider voting advantage” for Barnes & Noble founder Len Riggio...

As its investment portfolio was losing nearly a quarter of its value, the country's largest public pension fund doled out six-figure bonuses and substantial raises to its top employees... This year, the pension fund's board voted to take between $480 million and $600 million more from the state to make up for investment losses and the fact that retirees are living longer and receiving more pension payments. Part of that will come from the state's general fund, which faces a $19 billion deficit. CalPERS does not need legislative approval to enact an increase in the state's pension contribution rate.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman said Monday that she would place pension cutbacks on the ballot if negotiations with state workers fail and would consider using her personal fortune not only to win office but to advance her agenda if elected. Taking the issue to voters is "not my first choice," she told The Bee's editorial board. "But if we have to … this is an issue we have got to take up." The former eBay CEO and billionaire said she "possibly" would put her own money behind a ballot measure campaign. "My preference would be to raise the money,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- As its investment portfolio was losing nearly a quarter of its value, the country's largest public pension fund doled out six-figure bonuses and substantial raises to its top employees, an analysis by The Associated Press has found. Board member Tony Olivera said the California Public Employees' Retirement System tried to reduce the bonuses but was under contractual obligations to pay them. CalPERS' plunging value came as stock values tumbled around the world, the state's economy suffered its worst decline in decades and basic state services faced severe budget cuts.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders huddled for about three hours today to hammer out a long-delayed budget deal and bridge a $19 billion deficit. The only concrete result appeared to be the governor taking off the table a proposal to borrow money from the California Public Employees' Retirement System to balance the budget. The Big Five will meet again at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow. "The governor told the leaders that we're not going to do that," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear about the CalPERS idea. "It's just not the responsible thing to do."

9,111 retired California government workers receive pensions in excess of $100,000 from CalPERS Searchable database

In the ongoing budget stalemate, Democrats refuse to accept devastating cuts while Republicans reject new taxes. Nobody is budging. The longer this drags out, the more likely it is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers will resort to a well-worn playbook of accounting shifts, borrowing and asset sales to close out the rest of the budget. In the past, this has included paying state workers one day later and trying to sell the quasi-public state workers' compensation insurance fund. Such one-time budget tricks delay political backlash but contribute to California's long-term financial instability. They avoid taxes, so Republicans are happy....

For the past year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has warned that CalPERS was heading over a cliff and pawning off its financial problems on future generations. Now he wants to borrow $2 billion from the California Public Employees' Retirement System to help fix this year's state budget. The governor's plan represents an apparent about-face – and raises questions about the long-term costs. The last time the state borrowed from CalPERS, it had to pay the pension fund $400 million in interest. More borrowing would surely bring more interest expense, experts said Friday. CalPERS is obliged to "treat the loan as they...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has privately proposed borrowing $2 billion from the state's giant pension fund to help bridge California's $19 billion budget deficit. The plan would take the money as an advance against future savings from pension cuts, according to sources close to the negotiations who would not be identified because of the sensitive nature of the talks. The Republican governor is demanding that lawmakers reduce pension benefits for newly hired state workers back to pre-1999 levels as part of any budget agreement he signs. The Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis that year authorized larger pension benefits under the assumption...

The state's embattled pension system did not act four years ago when it learned about the city's runaway salaries. The state attorney general and auditors express shock that nothing was done. The failure of the state's embattled pension system to take action after learning four years ago of Bell city officials' runaway salaries has put the fund under another unwelcome spotlight. The state attorney general says he is shocked that nobody at the fund alerted law enforcement. Professional auditors are perplexed by the lack of follow-up that even board members at the California Public Employees' Retirement System are at a...

Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- Newly released documents show that Bell officials defended enormous salary increases to the California pension system, which decided not to challenge them. The California Public Employees' Retirement System released documents Thursday noting that its 2006 audit found the City Manager, Robert Rizzo, had received a 47-percent salary increase in one year. But the assistant city manager wrote CalPERS that the raise reflected Rizzo's contributions to the small Los Angeles suburb, including helping it resolve a multimillion-dollar debt. She also defended pay increases for herself and the City Council. CalPERS then ruled the city had provided...

As momentum builds to curb inflated public employee pensions in Contra Costa and other counties, a Sacramento bill aimed at stopping the practice would make the problem worse, critics say. The bills' authors say the bill would rightfully leave to union negotiations most decisions about how to curb end-of-career increases in pensions. Critics say labor cannot be trusted to correct a problem that could easily be fixed with legislation. Moreover, they say, because it is a problem created by poorly drafted legislation, the Legislature must be the one to fix it. A legal expert says the bill is so convoluted...

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is putting an administrative hold on the pensions of the former executives of the city of Bell, whose outrageous pay forced them to resign ... Bell’s high salaries and pension benefits spurred an investigation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown and CalPERS ... After the salaries were printed in the Los Angeles Times, public outcry forced the three of them to resign within a week. But the three are eligible for substantial pension benefits from CalPERS

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insists he won't sign a new state budget unless the Legislature rolls back a hefty increase in state employee pensions enacted 11 years ago. It's the latest wrinkle in Schwarzenegger's years-long war with the California Public Employees' Retirement System and state worker unions over what he contends is an unsustainable and "inexcusable" pension system that's killing the state budget. CalPERS and the unions respond, in effect, that the system is sound, despite multibillion-dollar investment losses, and that once the economy recovers, the nation's largest pension fund will resume hefty earnings to cover its obligations. As the argument...

The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission meets today to hear testimony about public pensions, aiming to dispassionately analyze the impact of retirement costs on governments and then, if needed, suggest changes. Heaven knows we need a dose of level-headed analysis, given the wide-open rhetoric that "pension reform" provokes. Unions see such efforts as a call to arms, "an attack on public employees," union lobbyist Dave Low once told The State Worker. Last year when it looked like an initiative might make the ballot to cut benefits for future government hires, Low warned it would provoke a "nuclear response" from labor. Context...

Before clocking a $100 billion loss in early 2009, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, known as Calpers, had the swagger of a hedge fund and the certainty of a saint. Other pension funds followed its lead, loading up on leverage, investing in unrated CDOs, shoving money into high-priced private equity deals and barreling into commodities and real estate. The question now is whether a loss of nearly 40% of its market value -- the worst loss in the system's 77-year history -- has brought Calpers sufficiently back down to earth to avoid another such debacle, and whether other chastened...

The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission meets today to hear testimony about public pensions, aiming to dispassionately analyze the impact of retirement costs on governments and then, if needed, suggest changes. Heaven knows we need a dose of level-headed analysis, given the wide-open rhetoric that "pension reform" provokes. Unions see such efforts as a call to arms, "an attack on public employees," union lobbyist Dave Low once told The State Worker. Last year when it looked like an initiative might make the ballot to cut benefits for future government hires, Low warned it would provoke a "nuclear response" from labor. Context...

California's fiscal pickle – state and local budgets that are many billions of dollars out of balance – may have just gotten worse by hundreds of billions of dollars. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has dropped a bombshell with preliminary new rules that, if adopted, would force governments to increase projections of pension liabilities by using tighter "discount rates" – effectively, lower assumptions of pension fund earnings. The huge California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, the University of California Retirement System and dozens of locally managed pension funds would no longer be able to minimize...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's full-court press on overhauling the public employee pension system reform got a mention in POLITICO over the weekend. Schwarzenegger, interviewed for a piece on the power of public employee unions in this year's cycle, reaffirmed the pledge he made in unveiling his revised budget in May to "not sign a budget if we don't have pension reform and budget reform."

An ever-mounting debt Vallejo has built up by not setting aside enough money for retired city employee pension benefits would take more than $16 million a year for three decades to pay off. Paying such a large annual sum of cash, however, would mean a smaller debt in the long-term, city officials said Tuesday at a Vallejo City Council special budget session looking at the 2010-2011 fiscal year. City finance staff recommended paying only 80 percent of that debt, owed to the state retirement agency. That move would leave the city with millions in debt at the end of 30...

California is the nation's shameful example of what happens when Democrats influenced by big-government labor rule the statehouse for forty years. With 12.5% unemployment (up from 4.5% a mere three years ago) and a "recognized" budget deficit of $21 billion, California has just found that out it is in much, much more financial trouble than anyone, especially a Democrat, really wants to admit. California's governor Schwarzenegger commissioned a study by Stanford University, which has found that California's three public employee pension funds (The California Public Employees' Retirement System [CalPERS], California State Teachers' Retirement System [CalSTRS], and University of California...

CalSTRS is poised to reduce its official forecast of investment returns by a half a percentage point, a move that would add to the pension fund's burden on taxpayers. The staff of the teachers' retirement system recommended today that CalSTRS reduce its forecast to 7.5 percent, reflecting the volatile investment climate.

Reporting from Sacramento The state's biggest public pension fund decided Wednesday to hold off for a month on a vote to approve a $700-million increase in the pension contributions it draws from the state and about 1,000 school districts. In a voice vote with one dissent, the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System approved a motion by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer to seek more information about the effect of the proposed increase on the state budget at a time when California faces a $19-billion deficit. "This is something we need to think about more," Lockyer said. » Don't...

In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that represented the largest issuance of non-voter-approved debt in the state's history. The bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries. The California Public Employees' Retirement System sold the pension boost to the state legislature by promising that "no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements" and that Calpers would "remain fully funded." They also claimed that enhanced pensions would...

In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that represented the largest issuance of non-voter-approved debt in the state's history. The bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries. The California Public Employees' Retirement System sold the pension boost to the state legislature by promising that "no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements" and that Calpers would "remain fully funded." They also claimed that enhanced pensions would...

Taxpayers would be on the hook for increasing their contribution to the state employees' pension fund by $600 million a year — at a time when the state budget is $19 billion in the red — under a recommendation approved Tuesday by a committee of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. The increase, which is expected to be endorsed by the 13-member board at a meeting Wednesday, is $400 million more than fund executives had expected to seek from the state. The state currently contributes $3.3 billion a year to employees' pensions. The jump in the state's annual contractual payment...