New Santa Ana | Tag Archives: public employee pensions

Santa Ana has $461M in unfunded public employee pension liabilities

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Art Pedroza Posted in Labor, Santa Ana 8 Comments

The Orange County Grand Jury has issued a new report on “Orange County City Pension Liabilities” and it turns out that the City of Santa Ana is very much in the hole.

Santa Ana has accrued $886M in public safety pensions and another $670M in other labor pensions. The bad news is that Santa Ana only has $639M in market value assets to pay off the public safety pensions (for retired firemen and police officers). Cops and firemen can retire at 55, and do so with huge pensions that can be in the six figures. Continue reading→

Mayor Pulido addresses the public employee pension fiasco

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Art Pedroza Posted in california, Miguel Pulido, Politics, Santa Ana 3 Comments

Pension costs: Pushing cities to fiscal disaster

By San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed & Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, The San Diego Union-Tribune

The skyrocketing cost of public employee retirement benefits is one of the greatest challenges facing cities and other government agencies across California today. Annual taxpayer contributions to CalPERS, the state’s main retirement system, have jumped from about $2 billion to nearly $8 billion over the past decade. Many non-CalPERS agencies have seen similar retirement cost increases as well.

Despite these rising contributions, the state’s retirement systems are significantly underfunded, with their collective unfunded liabilities for pension and retiree health care benefits totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Continue reading→

State Senator Lou Correa co-authors a bill to put limits on public employee pensions

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Art Pedroza Posted in Anaheim, Labor, Politics, Santa Ana 1 Comment

“Tapping into public resentment toward government pay perks, a state senator has introduced legislation that would put limits on the retirement benefits of government workers,” according to the Daily Democrat.

Who is that State Senator? His name is Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), but more importantly to those of us here in Orange County a more familiar name has co-authored the bill, S.B. 1425. No, I am not talking about Chuck DeVore, or Diane Harkey, or Jim Silva. Nope. The co-author of this bill, which will do a lot to control rising public employee pension costs is none other than State Senator Lou Correa (D-Anaheim)!

Under this “bill, bonuses awarded for seniority, extra pay for nighttime work and raises given to employees to put them on par with other employees, all which currently count toward the final salary, would no longer count.”

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Retired Santa Ana city workers often make over six figures a year!

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Art Pedroza Posted in Civic Affairs, Labor, Santa Ana Leave a comment

Who knew that working for the City of Santa Ana could make you a rich man? The O.C. Register investigated what many of our local cities are paying to their retired city employees.

While most of us have a bankrupt Social Security program to look forward to in our retirement, public employees make a ton of money in retirement, based on their last salary paid. It is common practices for city’s to spike their employee’s pensions by giving them a raise in their last year of employment. This happens a lot in Santa Ana, in particular.

Is this one of the reasons that the City of Santa Ana has such a huge budget deficit?

Here is the list of Santa Ana retired employees who are making over six figures in their retirement: Continue reading→