The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday approved a three-year benefits package that contains some costs but falls well short of the savings that district officials say is needed to keep the school system solvent. The 60,000 employees of L.A. Unified are not among the nation’s highest paid, but most enjoy comprehensive medical benefits […]
At the League news conference a reporter’s request for a definition of “unsustainability” was answered by Daniel Keen, a former Vallejo city manager with two decades of experience in five cities. The ability to absorb rising pension costs varies from city to city, Keen said, but one thing unsustainable for all is the erosion of […]
Renewal of Sacramento’s expiring half-cent tax would cover perhaps half of the projected increase in annual pension costs, but crowd out other services the tax now finances. Were voters to double it to a full cent, virtually every new dollar it generated would be needed to pay increased CalPERS demands. Asking voters to raise taxes […]
The employer contribution to California’s state and local government pension systems will double, from $31 billion in 2018 to $59 billion by 2024. This estimate is based on aggregating official projections of cost increases issued by CalPERS to their participating agencies, and extrapolating those projections show the overall impact on all of California’s 87 government […]
Everyone has heard about pension costs but few have heard about the other retirement cost that’s burdening California governments and schools. “OPEB” — “Other Post-Employment Benefits” — are a form of deferred compensation, just like pensions. The principal OPEB benefit is a promise to cover post-retirement health costs. Because government employees in California may retire […]
Retirement System (CalPERS) is rapidly increasing mandatory contributions into its pension trust fund to make up for those losses, cope with a host of rising expenses and, it would appear, stave off the prospect of its own insolvency. City managers, facing annual increases in contributions of 15-plus percent, are feeling the squeeze, which a new […]
California taxpayers are on the hook for more than $91.5 billion to provide health and dental benefits to state government workers when they retire, according to a report issued Wednesday by the state controller’s office.
Citing limited options for raising local taxes, the association representing hundreds of California cities warned that rising public employee pension costs might mean fewer services and longer emergency response times over the next several years.
U.S. worker productivity grew below its long-run average for the seventh straight year in 2017.
A tightening labor market might finally be producing pay raises for American workers, delivering one of the key missing ingredients in the expansion.
Were the Supreme Court to agree with Brown and uphold the appellate court rulings that seemingly repeal the California rule, it would be a huge setback for the unions – and a black eye for the local unions that opened the legal door by challenging the pension reform’s abolition of much-abused pension spiking and airtime.
The economists’ preferred model shows that past minimum wage increases in California have caused a measurable decrease in employment among affected employees. Specifically, they find that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would cause a nearly five-percent reduction in employment in an industry where one-half of workers earn wages close to the minimum. In an industry with an average share of lower-wage workers, their findings imply that each 10% increase in California’s minimum wage has reduced employment for affected employees by two percent.
Employers are spending more on vacation perks and retirement contributions, helping to propel overall compensation package growth to its fastest pace in two years. Private-sector workers’ average hourly compensation, including both pay and benefits, advanced 4% from a year earlier in the third quarter, according to new Labor Department data. It’s the best gain in total compensation since the same quarter in 2015.
Republican plans to slash the state-and-local tax deduction are already reaping benefits in high-tax states. Democrats in the Northeast say they’re having second thoughts about raising taxes. And lo and behold, California Gov. Jerry Brown is arguing that public pensions aren’t ironclad.
San Diego boosted pay between 25 percent and 30 percent for the city’s police officers on Tuesday to help solve a crisis of departing officers that has lengthened response times, limited proactive policing and ballooned overtime budgets.
The City Council unanimously approved the pay hikes, which also aim to attract recruits to the police academy. They come as the number of officers has dropped to about 1,820 — more than 10 percent below a goal of 2,040.