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By BRETT WILKISON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Sonoma County’s pension fund board has decided not to challenge a state appellate court ruling and instead will follow a lower court’s order to release pension figures for thousands of county government retirees.
Retirement officials vowed Thursday to disclose the records “swiftly” once they have notified the fund’s 8,000 active and retired members of the decision. That process will start early next week.
The move puts an end to more than a year of legal wrangling over access to pension records of county government employees.
The Press Democrat sought access to the data last summer in public records requests, all of which were turned down by the Sonoma County Employees’ Retirement Association.
The association has contended a 1937 state law governing county government retirement systems prevented the release of individual pension data.
The Press Democrat then sued SCERA in October, contending taxpayers were entitled to know how public money is being spent on pensions.
Late last month, a three-member panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling ordering the association to release the records.
SCERA’s board waited two weeks, until its next scheduled meeting, to discuss the court ruling. In a decision reached behind closed doors Thursday, the board ordered the pension fund’s staff to “take all reasonably necessary steps to release information in accordance with” the court’s decision, according to a written statement.
Jerry Allen, the board chairman, later defended the association’s efforts to block release of the information.
“We felt like we had to follow the guidance of our legal counsel about what the law said,” Allen said.
A section of the 1937 law states that “individual records of members shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed to anyone.”
But lower courts in at least five California counties, including Sonoma, and now three state appellate courts have ruled that the law does not prohibit the release of individual retirement records, including names and amounts of pensions.
“The court interpreted it for us, which was helpful,” Allen said.
The ruling does not apply to contact and address information or the amount of employees’ own pension contributions, which remain confidential.
The 1st District appellate court also found the association is not obligated to release the retirement age of county employees. The panel found that such information was considered private under state law and could be withheld.
The pension fund retained a private legal firm to represent it in the case. The cost of that contract to date is just over $75,000, according to SCERA administrator Gary Bei.
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Thank you Press Democrat. I will renew my subscription for this alone. Good job!
Well done Press Democrat.
“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. ”
Ronald Reagan
” … absence … of restraint upon unfair money-getting … create a small class of enormously wealthy … powerful men, who… hold and increase their power.”
Teddy Roosevelt
@Pearl – The Pentagon lost 2.3 Trillion in 1 year, how much did they lose in other years (and they did not lose it, they won’t tell us what they spent it on. It’s OUR tax paying dollars, we have a right to know where this money went to.)! Five Thousand Two Hundred Pentagon Employee’s caught downloading and purchasing CHILD Pornography, not just Porn but Child Pornography. This is the equivalent of a small town of perverts. If this was the private sector, all would be arrested!!!
When the person negotiating on OUR behalf is dependant on the person negotiating on THEIR behalf for his job, this will show us what we get.
It will shine a brain numbing light on the only solution…
Ban ALL Public Employee Unions NOW!
Rip up the contracts.
Tell them to fend for themselves in the Public Sector if they don’t like it.
We’ll do just fine without them.
@bats555
The “Pentagon”? Are you kidding?
That’s NOTHING… Wait till they’re running Health Care!
The Pentagon will look like a well oiled machine!
@RICHARD You have mistaken America for some other country. They way we do it here is YOU make YOURSELF one of the “400”. We call that living the “American Dream”. Maybe you’ve heard of it…
BTW… NOT everyone is SUPPOSED to make it to “400”. That’s the “living” part of the “Dream”.
The reason Warren Buffet is okay with the rich paying higher taxes is due to ideology and not because he thinks it’s the answer. If he thought it was the answer he would give his billions now and not wait until he dies to divy it up. If you though that giving your billions would help, why would you just sit on it and wait to distribute it? That seems cruel. I don’t think he’s cruel, I just think he knows better. Here’s a couple headlines on Warren Buffet.
How Warren Buffet pays no taxes (virtually no taxes)
Arthur Laffer
“You can’t raise taxes on the rich. These people know how to get around taxes,” says Laffer. “WARREN BUFFET” pays no taxes because all of his wealth is in unrealized capital gains. There’s no tax on unrealized capital gains, so how do you get it? You have to tax poor people.”
Warren Buffet sure talks about taxes a lot for someone who essentially doesn’t pay any since the vast bulk of his wealth consists of unrealized capital gains. Appreciation of Berkshire Hathaway stock that he just sits on and never sells any
______________________________________
Warren Buffett’s Company Hasn’t Paid All Taxes Owed In Years, Media Mum
By Noel Sheppard | August 29, 2011
Berkshire Hathaway hasn’t paid all owed taxes since 2002, for a guy who’s so into paying taxes this seems strange.
“Buffett wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece last month that he and his rich friends “have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”"-AP
“Obama Millionaire’s Tax: President To Seek New Tax Rate For Wealthy “-Huffington Post
Hey…and you wonder why we don’t continue to fund the local United Way, back stabbing un educated Mormon wanna bees…lol
What’s the solution? For starters if we have any hope of trying to save the benefits for previous service, we need to change the terms of future service. Having spent 1000’s of hours studying this problem, I believe we need to change the deal for future service to a generous 401K. Period. If we don’t a lot of fine younger AND older employees are going to see most of their jobs and services lost or outsourced to private industry, nonprofits and volunteer organizations.
If you can’t set aside enough today for a benefit, how will you fund it tomorrow? Without creative and innovative reforms reinventing government, we’re all on the same conveyor belt toward insolvency; we’re all gonna get there sooner or later.
@ Bear
Always appreciate your thoughtful responses and thank you for your years of public service.
The problem with Sonoma County’s retirement benefits for our public servants, and throughout the nation for that matter, is promises have been made that cannot be kept. Defined benefits by/for the benefit of one generation, and paid by the next, are draining all the essential services government used to be able to provide for decades. Due to fraudulent accounting and all sorts of budgetary chicanery; that in private industry would put the culprits in jail…You Bear are at risk of not only losing promised health care, but seeing the whole system come crashing down like my wife lived through with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A recent op-ed piece in the Press Democrat stated that the average household income in Sonoma County has been on the decline since 1999. Meanwhile the salaries for Sonoma County workers have increased by 50% and the retirement costs have increased over 150%, much of the increase going to the “upper tier” not to the rank and file line workers. In order to make up for the shortfall we have borrowed over $600 Million in Pension Obligation Bonds becoming the #1 County by far in the entire State (58 Counties) in per capita bond debt.
The number of County workers is down almost 1000 employees since 2004 but the payroll and benefit costs are almost the same due to huge increases in pension debt and healthcare costs. In addition to Social Security set aside,Sonoma County now matches43% of each dollar of salary toward retirement benefits, the average in private industry if one is lucky enough to get a 401K is a 3.6% employer match…Sonoma County is 10-15 times that! And if the County used an actuarial rate of return based on their average for the last decade of 4%, rather than the current 8%, the more realistic amount to fully fund the retirement benefit would be more like dollar for dollar, retirement contribution to salary.
FUBAR-yeah, those 400 evil globalists run the show. They want it all.
They are Agenda 21.
@Richard,
According to your (somewhat erroneous) scenario if governments stopped borrowing from banks this giant rip-off couldn’t happen. Why don’t they?
Banks borrow from the FED at about 0%
Banks loan the US Government at about 3%
Bank loan to CA Government at about 6%
Banks loan to consumers at about 30%
Bankers pay themselves millions of dollars per year.
Government uses the poorer to subsidize the richer.
This is not the format for a discussion of why the disparity in wealth in America. But one point might be useful.
Wealth results from postponing consumption. It is savings. Americans have been, for several decades, notorious non-savers. We consume. Not just 100% of our incomes but, with the help of credit cards, 110% of our incomes. Stand outside Costco and see what comes out the door.
I think we’ve all known people with high incomes and no savings. They lease cars, houses, keep high credit card balances, and live the good life. And their net worth is near zero. And we’ve also known people with modest incomes who save regularly and, over time, become at least modestly wealthy.
What’s the slogan of America today: “shop ’till we drop.”
Why should anyone be surprised that most Americans have little or no savings? For anyone who practices modicum of frugality, America is a pretty easy place to accumulate wealth.
@Jim,
Most County of Sonoma Employees now pay 10%+ into the retirement system AND pay into Social Security and Medicare. According to your figures, your bottom line is the County employee is left with more taxable income. Well…wouldn’t that also mean that the County employee pays more Income Tax that the Private Sector Employee?
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with some of what you are saying. The corruption is at the TOP and it needs to stop – from the top of DC all the way down to the lowest level of Government Agencies.
What I am tired of is the general public assuming that the real worker bees of all Government sectors are lumped in with the upper eschelon of management. I’m tired of reading how we’re all getting RICH off the general public.
I pay my tax dollars too (yes our retirement income is taxable) and I believe I can do a better job taking care of myself and my family than they can.
Richard:
Its none of your business how much other people have in money, cars, homes, or whatever else they are lucky enough to own.
Jealousy and envy are seriously bad character traits.
Poor Richard claims, “It’s time to stop fighting over the scraps and allowing the rich to exploit the poor, in my opinion.”
Your logic is that… wealthy families steal from people to make them poor? Because 400 families have lots of money, this is reason to do what ?
So I guess you want the Government to take from the rich and give to the poor?
How about everybody pay the same %percentage of tax…like a flat tax. Why would that not be fair?
Because some have more than others?
Equal outcomes puts us in rice fields with the masses wearing gray overalls.
Say NO to equal outcomes, Say YES to the freedom to build, to create, to prosper.
The richest 400 families in the USA have as much wealth as the bottom 150,000,000 people have; that’s the bottom half of the entire USA population.
If you know history you know where this is headed.
It’s time to stop fighting over the scraps and allowing the rich to exploit the poor, in my opinion.
This is issue is just a drop in a bucket, compared to the Pentagon our most ill managed branch of the Federal government, run by perverts. I try to mention this on every forum as mainstream media has been suppressed. Check out these links below, almost exactly 10 years ago in a Senate hearing they just found out from DOD’s own audit that the Pentagon cannot account for 2.3 TRILLION lost in 1 YEAR. No further investigation, no word on where our money had gone. 2.3 Trillion could go a long way in bailing us out of the current economic fiasco we are currently in. This year a report came out that 5200 Pentagon employee’s were caught downloading and purchasing CHILD Pornography. 5200 folks,why is there no investigation, why is this not in mainstream media. Are they still employed by the Pentagon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRqeJcuK-A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7qTBkA8X_E
One word response: LIARS.
You don’t care what the average County employee doesn’t get. You don’t know that we’re paying $800+ for health insurance for two, and it’s going up 70% a year. My whole retirement is going to health insurance that the County promised but is not providing. LIARS.
You don’t know much. And we don’t know much about you. Care to reveal your sources of income and your tax breaks? We don’t get those things.
So I suggest you consult the folks who will scam your tax burdens and your credit card debt. They’re on TV all the time.
People have led productive lives, paid for their health insurance and retirement and all the other taxes and not scammed the system like you capitalist bloodsucking parasites.
Am I wrong? Prove it.
Do you really want class warfare?
One word response..
Unsustainable
The size and scope of this epic rip off is going to make our collective brains melt into the ground. Thanks to the PD for suing and doing the right thing.
I hope the public can connect the dots and dethrone all the cronies and nepotists that plague our local politics.
@Just Me:
The issue with pensions is that they are unfunded. The government offers them to all employees and doesn’t fund them. Instead, they take taxpayer money, waste it on bloated and/or redundant departments and then demand money from the state (again, us taxpayers) to couch up a chunk to fund it. The unfunded pension liability in CA is over $500 billion. Yet they keep hiring, they keep spending and keep running businesses and taxpayers out of the state.
If a private company wants to promise pensions, fine. It makes them less competitive and will eventually lead to bankruptcy at the hands of the union demands (look at the auto industry, airlines, etc).
For those who work in the private sector, we fund a 401k and end up with whatever we have saved plus any growth in the account. When you do the math on the contribution level needed to garner the lifetime income stream that a pension provides, the meager contributions demanded for public workers doesn’t make the cut.
Additional salt in the wound related to pensions is the fact that many are double-dipping and/or generating lifetime payments that exceed that of when they were working.
Look at the former chief of police in San Francisco. She retired recently and is collecting a monthly pension 42% HIGHER than any salary she ever earned for actually working. Her projected lifetime pension, not including medical, is over $5,000,000. No reasonable person can possible support paying a supposed public employee $5,000,000 in retirement. Yet the media loves to point out gross payments to departing CEOs, even though it is a private company making the payment. Where is the media outrage when a public servant becomes a millionaire, paid for by the public? It is never mentioned. I guarantee you her contributions were nowhere near enough to cover the $5,000,000 pension.
One other point that is never mentioned…those in the private sector must pay into social security and also must save in a 401k for any hope of retirement. With a public worker and a private worker both making $100,000 (for example), the 6% social security and 15% 401k deduction puts taxable income for the private sector worker at $79,000. A public sector worker, who puts in maybe 8% into their pension, leaves them with $92,000 in taxable income. Private section workers also have higher medical premiums. The public worker has a guaranteed retirement, whereas the private worker doesn’t, even though more money is saved (less available to live a lifestyle). Seeing how the market has done in the last decade, the private worker’s savings don’t guarantee anything.
My sincere THANK YOU to the Press Democrat for taking the County to court.
Clearly, Americans can no longer trust our local, state, or federal government to act in our benefit without a court fight.
Its going to be really hard to convince people that they should be happy living on social security when they see public employees taking home monthly pension checks that are three and four times bigger.
Its going to be really hard to convince voters that governments demands for more tax increases are justified when the voters witness the billions being paid into excessively large public pensions.
Can’t wait to see this data.
Though, it won’t show anything we don’t already know. Probably an equal number of people on the pension as there are actual workers, meaning that for every filled job there is a second employee being paid for doing nothing. I also expect many people who are collecting a county pension but working somewhere else in the government (“double dipping”).
What I know will come out of this is nothing. Regardless of how gross the figures are, how absurd the pension payments are, the media will hide it, the Sheeple will ignore it and we’ll all continue to accept the bloated, overpaid, basically worthless government we all keep voting for.
I know which name I’m going to look up first….
It’s under the D’s….
It rhymes with hole; like a HUGE HOLE in funding of the pensions….
I think the Public will be appalled to see that many of us Retirees are living below poverty level on these retirement checks. The Public thinks we’re all sitting back, getting rich and floating in thier dough$. Don’t I wish.
Dear Publc…guess what!?! I was forced to contribute to this retirement plan my entire career…and in the early years I only made $50 over the threshold to receive food stamps. How do I know? Because I (as a single parent) applied for them so my 2 kids didn’t have to eat cheap macaroni and cheese, cheap hot dogs and eggs, food bank bread and butter every day. Yep, I was rolling in dough then and still am now!
Thank you for “rewarding” me for working many uncompensated hours in overcrorwded conditions (inmates have it better) to be sure you had the services you demanded.