California’s state correctional officers would get their biggest raise since the recession if they approve a tentative agreement for a one-year contract their union struck with Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration this month. The deal includes a 5 percent general wage increase that would take effect on July 1, 2019. . . . The state human […]
Recently released data from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows the strain on state retirement systems across the nation as state pension funds strive to keep pace with pensions owed to public employees. As of fiscal year (FY) 2016 (the most recent data available), states reported a combined $1.4 trillion in state pension plan funding deficits. […]
At his latest state budget press conference, Gov. Jerry Brown made it clear there will be no state cavalry riding to the rescue of local governments battling the pension monsters local officials created. Therefore, taxpayers will have to be on guard against a potential avalanche of tax measures that could appear to deal with the […]
Los Angeles firefighter Donn Thompson had a busy year in 2017. If his pay stubs are to be believed, he literally never stopped working. Data obtained by Transparent California, a project of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, show that Thompson pulled down $300,000 in overtime pay during 2017, on top of his $92,000 salary. Over […]
A California tax department where almost a third of managers are related to another employee is unwinding nepotistic chains of supervision six months after a state audit revealed a problematic concentration of personal relationships among staff. California Department of Tax and Fee Administration Director Nicolas Maduros reported on Thursday that 141 of his department’s 484 […]
California’s General Fund tax revenues have grown nearly 50 percent since a tax increase in 2012. But funding for most services has grown at a fraction of that pace. Eg, funding for courts has grown only 12 percent. That’s because tax revenues are increasingly being diverted to (i) pensions, (ii) subsidies for retired employees (“OPEB”), […]
Average hourly pay for private-sector workers, adjusted for inflation, was flat in April from a month earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. Average weekly earnings, also taking into account inflation, fell 0.1% last month. From a year earlier, real average hourly earnings for private-industry employees edged up just 0.2% in April. In 2015, hourly earnings […]
CalPERS says that an uptick in 2017 earnings, to more than 11 percent, has raised its funding level to 71 percent. That’s obviously good news, but CalPERS’ own staff estimates that earnings over the next decade should barely average 6 percent a year, which, if true, would mean the system would either have to allow […]
As part of a shift toward less optimistic expectations for investment returns to pay for government worker pensions, board members of the California Public Employees Retirement System voted Tuesday to require an almost $6.3-billion payment from the state budget in the fiscal year that begins on July 1. The action, which could receive final approval […]
Average hourly earnings increased 2.7 percent, seasonally adjusted, from March 2017 to March 2018. The increase in average hourly earnings combined with a 0.6-percent increase in the average workweek and a 2.4-percent change in the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) resulted in a 0.9-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this […]
Former high-level Los Angeles city employees continued to rake in high pension payouts in 2017, with a former assistant fire chief topping the list with his $1.38 million pension earning, according to data released this week by Transparent California. The assistant fire chief, Donald Frazeur, was paid a lump sum of $1,171,994 in addition to […]
Last year was one of the best ever for the CalPERS investment fund, a gain of $47 billion that boosted the total to $350 billion. But pension funding only increased from 68 to 71 percent of the projected assets needed to pay future costs. A CalPERS report last week said investments earned 15.7 percent last […]
Social Security and Medicare costs are rapidly rising due to the retirement of 74 million baby boomers into a system that already runs substantial per-person deficits. Today’s typical retiring couple has paid $140,000 into Medicare and will receive $420,000 in benefits (both adjusted into net present values). Most Social Security recipients also come out ahead. […]
A group of distinguished economists from the Hoover Institution, a public-policy think tank at Stanford University, identifies a serious problem. The federal budget deficit is on track to exceed $1 trillion next year and get worse over time. Eventually, ever-rising debt and deficits will cause interest rates to rise, and the portion of tax revenue […]
Unless Congress acts to reduce federal budget deficits, the outstanding public debt will reach $20 trillion a scant five years from now, up from its current level of $15 trillion. That amounts to almost a quarter of million dollars for a family of four, more than twice the median household wealth. . . .As is […]