Posted on 06/17/2005 10:23:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre said Friday that he had asked the city's auditor to hold off paying retirement benefits that Aguirre contends are illegal.
At a noontime news conference at his offices downtown, Aguirre said he had written auditor John Torell urging him to not pay the benefits and to recalculate the amount legally due each retiree.
"We need our auditor to step forward to meet his responsibility to not participate in continuing to pay illegal benefits," Aguirre said. "It is now a moral, legal and ethical issue for him to decline to be a part of the illegal process, stop business as usual and do the right thing.
"I hope he does the right thing."
Torell could not be immediately reached for his response.
There are 18,000 current or former city workers in the pension plan, 4,100 of them are currently drawing benefits.
"It is not fair to people who aren't drawing benefits yet that these illegal benefits are depleting the benefits of those still working," Aguirre said.
Aguirre has been feuding with other City Hall officials over the pension benefits and other matters for months. He contends the benefits were increased illegally in the 1990s, citing underfunding and conflicts of interest. Others have argued that it's not so certain that the benefits are illegal.
Aguirre delivered his remarks less than two hours before the city's pension board was to meet under pressure to release documents that are believed to be important to the continuing investigations into the pension controversy.
On Tuesday, the San Diego City Council refused to approve the pension's board's budget until next week to push the board to reconsider its refusal to release the documents. Pension board members have said the documents are protected attorney-client communications.
The documents relate to the $1.4 billion pension deficit that is looming over city finances.
The city began underfunding its pension fund in 1996, using contributions meant for the system to pay for annual operating expenses. In 2002, the City Council and the pension board voted to continue the practice as the pension's unfunded liability was rising.
During that time, the council also improved employee retirement benefits.
Subsequent underfunding of the pension system, along with increases to employee benefits, have helped create the unfunded liability of at least $1.4 billion. The system is also saddled with at least $500 million in unfunded retiree health care costs.
Investigators from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office are looking into the troubled pension system and the Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the city's disclosure practices.
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has filed felony conflict-of-interest charges against five former and one current pension board members in connection with votes they made in 2002.
The city has not been able to complete audits of its last two years of financial statements, which has kept it from entering the bond market and borrowing at favorable rates.
Well - Doah - I'd start with Aguerra (sp) who has a mill + estate in Puerta Varta and work up and down from there. (how did he do that on his paultry salary?)
We are talkin' SD county employees ... right?
Ooooo San Diego .......
Follow the money ...
>>a mill + estate in Puerta Varta<<
With climbing property values today, that would be easy. I saw 350K homes double in two years in my area.
Interestingly, a bunch of these people are new appointees by Mayor Murphy, who apparently didn't extract a promise to release these records from them before putting them on the board. Something is extremely fishy here.
Brilliant management!
city, city, city, city, city, city,
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.