Free Republic

A pension fund covering 413,000 Colorado public employees and retirees has lost $10 billion in market value through mid-October. The drop in the assets of the Public Employee's Retirement Association raises the prospect of higher contribution rates or lower benefits if the market doesn't improve quickly. Colorado PERA had been hoping ...

Michael Shires, professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine scratches the itch of why government is so expensive in California; including local county and municipal governments. Shires argues that it is just not a matter of increased taxes v. cutting services; this is how Democrats and Republicans in the California legislature paint the picture. Rather, revenue declines are only a small part of the problem. While services and their cost actually do not increase, the annual increase of secretly negotiated salary, benefits, and cost-of-living increases benefitting unionized public employees is killing budgets, savings, and family finances statewide.Shires writes: “Most public employees...

Vallejo, Calif., took the extreme step of filing for bankruptcy to get out of generous obligations to public employees. Other cities and states are watchingThe jig is up. For years, politicians have been playing what amounts to a multi-trillion-dollar shell game with state and local pensions. They've doled out lush retiree benefits to their heavily unionized workforces, knowing that they could shove the cost for those benefits onto future generations of taxpayers. But a recent financial bombshell dropped by a San Francisco suburb shows why that shell game is now starting to unravel in a nasty way. And it's a...

The fallout from The Bee's decision to post a searchable-by-name database of state worker salaries at sacbee.com continued last week, dominating reader feedback for a second time.There were, however, a few new twists that weren't apparent in the initial days after the database and the accompanying story about state salaries were published March 4.While the overall tenor of response from state workers remains critical – though the number of complaints has significantly declined – an increasing number of state employees and just plain citizens say they support the paper's decision to create the database. And it's more clear than ever...

California taxpayers forked out $10.2 billion for public employee pensions in 2003-04 and are likely to face even greater liability in future years, according to a study released Monday. The study prepared for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association by the Center for Government Analysis at Newport Beach analyzed 130 public pension systems statewide and found taxpayer outlays doubled from 1997-98 to 2003-04. "State and local governments are going to have to put more money into these systems and that means less money for police, less money for teachers, less money for schools, less money for roads, less money for parks...

SAN FRANCISCO - The bill is coming due for years of generous benefits bestowed upon state, county, city and school employees, and it's a stunner: hundreds of billions of dollars over the next three decades, threatening some local governments with bankruptcy and all but guaranteeing cuts in education, public safety and other services. This staggering burden is coming to light because of new rules issued by the Government Accounting Standards Board. They require public agencies to disclose the future cost of health care and other benefits - such as dental, vision and life insurance - promised in addition to traditional...

OAKLAND -- A federal study now under way finds the cost of building the new Bay Bridge -- specifically the signature 525-foot suspension tower -- could explode again, this time by almost half a billion dollars. Almost ten years ago, Caltrans estimated it would cost $1.3 billion dollars to replace the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Five years ago, the state said it would in fact cost almost twice that much -- $2.5 billion -- for a new bridge. Last year, Caltrans had still another projected cost: almost $5.3 billion dollars. Wednesday night, Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss acknowledged the...

...Mr. Schwarzenegger's goals as governor include shaking up Sacramento, where an intransigent legislature beholden to special interests had turned the state into an economic basket case. Arnold does have something to show for his efforts to date, insofar as the fiscal bleeding seems to have stopped. California's credit rating is out of the gutter, and the economy has created a quarter-million new jobs in the past year. Still, important reforms remain unaddressed, and the passage of Proposition 75, also known as "paycheck protection," would go a long way toward ending California politics-as-usual. By forcing public-sector unions to get written permission...

OAKLAND - Alameda County paid nearly 800 government employees more than $100,000 each in the fiscal year that ended in July 2004, according to records released to the Times on Friday. The records released by the office of Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie mark a significant turnabout in the county's long resistance to making public the salaries of its highest-paid employees. The data shows that 115 employees with the title deputy sheriff made between $100,313 and $184,094 last year and that 74 with the title sergeant were paid between $100,203 and $170,165. The county employs roughly 10,000 workers.County lawyers, under...

<p>With the Davis administration long gone, and the reform-minded Schwarzenegger administration grappling with ways to make the budget balance, state legislators are looking closely at enormous pay and benefit hikes the former governor granted to the prison guards union.</p> <p>The union was one of Mr. Davis' biggest campaign contributors, and guards received an incredible 34 percent pay increase over four years in the midst of the government budget crunch. It certainly paid to be a friend, or at least a contributor, to Gray Davis.</p>

The snow shovels may come out of hibernation this weekend, when cold fronts moving in from the north and south dump several inches of the white stuff across Boston and outlying areas. And state-contracted plow drivers are considering sitting the storm out. ``Saturday looks ugly,'' said Alan Dunham of the National Weather Service in Taunton. ``There's a possibility of more than 6 inches of snow. We don't expect the snow to clear up until Sunday morning.'' That could mean bad news for drivers if snow-plow operators in a contract dispute with the state refuse to show up when called to...

    Author ArchiveE-mail AuthorSend to a FriendPrint Version May 28, 2003, 9:25 a.m.Disenfranchise the Public SectorI’m not the only one voting for fewer voters. RO readers who patronize The Corner may have read my recent confessions in respect of heavyweight political science, viz., it sends me to sleep. I would rather remove my own gall bladder with a pair of rusty scissors than be obliged to read the collected works of Leo Strauss. However, while I can't handle the highbrow stuff, I am a fairly keen reader of pop-poli-sci books. In this respect I resemble a person who......

Everyone seems to have their favorite conspiracies nowadays and we must get "alerted" to four or five new ones a week. So, herein, we shall not be starting yet another. Still, there is a rather significant point that must be made before the general election next month. Because, there really is a well entrenched organization afoot that is unabashedly reorganizing life in the United States as we know it. This group is not secret. In fact, they hold semipublic meetings in our nation's Capitol and everyone in the Washington press corps know about them. Fifty years ago, most members of...

Landscaping Controversy Growing In Local Suburb School Custodians Want Paid For Work Volunteers Did BROOKLYN, Ohio -- A controversy is growing in Brooklyn -- literally growing. NewsChannel5's Leon Bibb reported that the uproar is about trees and bushes and shrubs and how they got planted. Students at Roadoan Elementary School thought it would be appropriate to plant a tree to help remember an 8-year-old classmate who died of a brain aneurysm. The idea grew, and local landscapers heard about it. "And so they came to volunteer their services over there," said Gretchen Derethik, principal of Brooklyn High School. They even...