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Hoffa op/ed
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<blockquote data-quote="hypocrisy" data-source="post: 808205" data-attributes="member: 9500"><p>I think this is what you are referring to:</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is an emotion laden comment from "SmithL", so not necessarily based in fact. If we pick it apart we see it refers to "a guy at age 54 could retire" and not specifically Oakland police officers. SmithL goes on to say that there are 12,000 individuals with a pension over $100k in California. I would tend to discount random comments on an article to use as facts unless they are backed up but I did some more research just for fun.</p><p></p><p>A source that agrees with you, has only 9,111 Government workers (not broken down administrative vs. employees) receiving $100k+ from CalPERS, 5,309 teachers and administrators (I'm sure this leans heavily toward administrators but of course they emphasize teachers) and 1,642 University employees (a fact I found surprising, and again not broken down). I think this database is deliberate in the information it omits, specifically the type of position people retired from. If you put in "Oakland" under CalPERS, you get 224 people receiving $100k or more. 15 under CalSTERS, and we'll have to just assume the UC number is relatively small as there are only small community colleges in Oakland. So only 239 or so Oakland public employees receive pensions of over $100k, not a significant number in the grand scheme of things.</p><p></p><p>While I was unable to find the total number of UCRP participants, there are over 1.6 million CalPERS members and 847,833 CalSTRs. So even the total number of 16,062 $100k recipients isn't statistically significant.</p><p></p><p>Oakland police officers offered to contribute 9% of their pay to the pension plan AND a later retirement age for new hires (which would further reduce the burden). This was in exchange for a 3 year moratorium on layoffs. I'd be surprised if Oakland didn't have significant numbers of 54 yr old police officers, and seeing as it's the most violent city in California, if a $200k pension were available they would leave in droves: no layoffs necessary.</p><p></p><p>Reading further in that article, it seems to me that Oakland was hell bent on laying off police officers regardless of what concessions were given regarding pensions.</p><p></p><p>I'm not championing California's pension system as perfect, but I don't think it's being fairly examined. If you have a teacher, or rank and file police officer etc, who starts at a young age working toward a goal knowing the rules he signed up for (extra education, required training, living in the city they work,etc) and they achieve that goal of retiring I think they deserve everything that was promised to them. If they want to change the rules for new hires, that should be done during contract negotiations.</p><p></p><p>Oftentimes it is argued that administrators pay needs to be competitive to attract talent from the private sector. I think it could be argued that upper echelon pay could be cut significantly, and should be, because there is plenty of private sector talent out of work or willing to make the jump into a stable government job at less pay.</p><p></p><p>I'm no fan of taxes either, and I vote down just about every one that is presented to me. However, I feel it's more important to keep the people responsible for creating the need for taxes by irresponsibly managing the public's money.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hypocrisy, post: 808205, member: 9500"] I think this is what you are referring to: This is an emotion laden comment from "SmithL", so not necessarily based in fact. If we pick it apart we see it refers to "a guy at age 54 could retire" and not specifically Oakland police officers. SmithL goes on to say that there are 12,000 individuals with a pension over $100k in California. I would tend to discount random comments on an article to use as facts unless they are backed up but I did some more research just for fun. A source that agrees with you, has only 9,111 Government workers (not broken down administrative vs. employees) receiving $100k+ from CalPERS, 5,309 teachers and administrators (I'm sure this leans heavily toward administrators but of course they emphasize teachers) and 1,642 University employees (a fact I found surprising, and again not broken down). I think this database is deliberate in the information it omits, specifically the type of position people retired from. If you put in "Oakland" under CalPERS, you get 224 people receiving $100k or more. 15 under CalSTERS, and we'll have to just assume the UC number is relatively small as there are only small community colleges in Oakland. So only 239 or so Oakland public employees receive pensions of over $100k, not a significant number in the grand scheme of things. While I was unable to find the total number of UCRP participants, there are over 1.6 million CalPERS members and 847,833 CalSTRs. So even the total number of 16,062 $100k recipients isn't statistically significant. Oakland police officers offered to contribute 9% of their pay to the pension plan AND a later retirement age for new hires (which would further reduce the burden). This was in exchange for a 3 year moratorium on layoffs. I'd be surprised if Oakland didn't have significant numbers of 54 yr old police officers, and seeing as it's the most violent city in California, if a $200k pension were available they would leave in droves: no layoffs necessary. Reading further in that article, it seems to me that Oakland was hell bent on laying off police officers regardless of what concessions were given regarding pensions. I'm not championing California's pension system as perfect, but I don't think it's being fairly examined. If you have a teacher, or rank and file police officer etc, who starts at a young age working toward a goal knowing the rules he signed up for (extra education, required training, living in the city they work,etc) and they achieve that goal of retiring I think they deserve everything that was promised to them. If they want to change the rules for new hires, that should be done during contract negotiations. Oftentimes it is argued that administrators pay needs to be competitive to attract talent from the private sector. I think it could be argued that upper echelon pay could be cut significantly, and should be, because there is plenty of private sector talent out of work or willing to make the jump into a stable government job at less pay. I'm no fan of taxes either, and I vote down just about every one that is presented to me. However, I feel it's more important to keep the people responsible for creating the need for taxes by irresponsibly managing the public's money. [/QUOTE]
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