Stepping away from City Hall and community centers to talk about the budget and retirement benefit reform, Mayor Chuck Reed, labor leaders and a couple Stanford University scholars will be meeting Monday night to take an in-depth look at the city’s pension crisis.The event is open to the public.
The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) will be conducting the community meeting from 7-9pm at the Gunn Building (366 Galvez Street) on Stanford’s campus. According to a press release, “The meeting will include a background briefing on how pensions work; the current financial state of CalPERS and CalSTRS, the state’s largest pension systems; a detailed look at San Jose’s two pension plans; and the impact of San Jose’s pension obligations on other budget expenditures.”
Speakers will include: Jennifer Baker, CalSTRS; Jim Dertouzos, RAND Corporation; Dan Doonan, AFSCME, Local 101; Charles Jones, City Commissioner; Matt Loesch, San Jose Federated City Employees’ Retirement System; Joe Nation, Stanford University; the Hon. Chuck Reed, City of San Jose; and John Shoven, Stanford University.
The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), is an independent, non-partisan research institute. Founded in 1982, SIEPR’s mission is to conduct research on important economic policy issues facing the United States and other countries. SIEPR’s goal is to inform and advise policymakers and the public and to guide their decisions with sound policy analysis.
Chuckie,
No one wants to hear your doomsday speech anymore. You have failed San Jose now you want to spread your “down with the unions” to advance you political agenda.
We are getting really tired of you!!
Instead of merely bashing Mayor Reed, why won’t the union sympathizers provide facts to show how the city can sustainably pay for defined-benefit pensions?
Debate the Mayor on the numbers, so voters can make independent judgments. The Stanford study at:
http://www.sanjoseca.gov/district6/documents/8-22-2011CAPensionCrisisperspectivesonCalPersandSJPensionPlans.pdf
shows that economically the City will be reduced to the police and fire departments.
In a strange circular fashion, the unions are unwittingly becoming enables of small government.
Jennifer Baker is a representative of the California Teachers’ Association, not the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Please correct this error.
—Ricardo Duran
Media Relations
California State Teachers’ Retirement System
(916) 414-1425
They should have been talking about his years ago, but it’s better late than never.
Now, it looks like CalSTRS is in trouble. Currently, they have a $56 Billion shortfall. The dominoes keeps falling.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/27389290/detail.html.
Why is the SJ pension system under funded? Could it me that the City doesn’t deposit its portion into the fund? and if not, Why not?
I checked my account and found that I have contributed $163k over 20 years as an employee – that amount earned $18k in interest for a total of $182k.
The account “SAYS” that the City contributed $326k over teh 20 years I have worked for the City BUT IS SHOWS THAT AMOUNT EARNED $0.00 (zero!) in interest!
The total balance is $507k.
How can that be? If the City actually deposited its contribution into the account then shouldn’t it have earned interest just like my contibutions did? (about $36k) Why didnt the City’s money earne any interest? (should have earned about 11%???)
This is the perfect message for Carol Rosen. Are you out there Carol? Does it make sense now. This is exactly what I was talking about; we have our LAME leaders to blame for this mess. Misspending, lies, personal agendas, etc.
The city didn’t earn any interest because their contribution never existed. It’s a sham.
You’re not the only person – and yours is not the only employee group – for whom this has been done. The pension statements for police officers reads more or less the same: no interest accrued by the City’s portion of the retirement contribution.
I am re-posting this from an earlier blog, as I think that my comments are even more relevant here than in a blog on golf courses. Furthermore, I think that my comments in that post illustrate even more starkly the unrepentant hypocrisy and unreasoned demagoguery which Mayor Reed embraces. Mayor Reed’s voting record is a stunning indictment, and even a perfunctory examination of his time in office as a councilman and mayor absolutely destroys the credibility he’d like for you to accord to him. So, without further ado:
“In point of fact, those WERE indeed the arguments (that libraries are an integral part of public safety) put forth which exchanged 66 police officers for something close to the status quo at libraries, among other non-charter services. Mayor Reed himself was quoted in an earlier post on this blog that citizens considered libraries to play a role in public safety. Never mind that you can’t file a police report at a library. Never mind that a librarian won’t investigate, much less solve a crime. Never mind that a librarian wouldn’t know the first thing about applying laws of arrest, search and siezure or how to deal with a gang member. Never mind that a librarian won’t handle a traffic accident, search for a missing child, make a domestic violence arrest, catch an armed robber, get a destabilized schizophrenic into custody or resolve any of the other hundreds of types of calls for service to which cops get dispatched daily.
At any time he was confronted by a citizen spouting that easily-disproved hogwash, the responsible thing to do would have been to point out what I just did in the preceding paragraph and then to emphasize that, as important as libraries might be to a healthy community, their existence is meaningless if people feel that the city is so unsafe that they really don’t want to go out or let their kids go to libraries.
Unfortunately, by his actions and words, Mayor Reed has proven that he is the farthest thing from responsible, as even a perfunctory examination of his voting record would reveal:
tax base reductions by voting to convert untold numbers of commercial parcels to residential parcels,
approval of the construction of thousands of new housing units in a depressed housing market which has had the net result of artificially lowering property values throughout the city,
adding insult to that particular injury by approving thousands of units of affordable housing, which invariably absorbs far more public safety services than market-rate housing (a concern on which PLO has commented),
approval of massive transfers of capital from the general fund to the RDA,
laying off employees and imposing wage/benefit reductions while simultaneously distributing tens of millions of dollars in grant money out of the general fund to services or programs which are of little or no benefit to the city as a whole,
failure to divest the city of such money-losing ventures as Hayes Mansion, various golf courses, the Mexican Heritage Plaza, and others,
presiding for the last decade or so over the abject, embarrassing fiscal failure that is the SJ RDA,d of which every city council person and the mayor are board members.
Hiring and then keeping Debra Figone, a woman who is reputed to be a petty, vindictive, dictatorial manager who could probably do a credible job playing the female version of the Emperor from Star Wars without doing any real ‘acting’ on her part. See the following for all the reasons why she should either be fired or forced to resign: http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/citizen/san-jose-city-manager-must-go-1/
No, Mayor Reed is not the responsible leader he and others would like the rest of us to believe, and I’ve merely covered the tip of the iceberg of his irresponsible reprehensible behavior, and the guilt of which most – if not all – of the City Council share at least a large measure. And, at some point, I hope that the effects of the Kool-Aid Mayor Reed has been dispensing will eventually wear off and San Jose’s citizens will wake up and see what a debacle he’s created and try to mend the crumbling ruin he’s set about making of this city.”
BEAUTIFULLY STATED!NOW IF ONLY THE RESIDENTS OF SAN JOSE WOULD REALIZE THIS!
Thanks OfficerD.
We should shut down everything run by the city and get government off the backs of the people. There is no need for a mayor, a council, a city manager, and all those city employees, no libraries, golf courses, heritage plazas, music in the park, airports needed.
The only essentials are police and fire departments. And defined benefit pensions that will get paid regardless of how the investments perform.
If the unions are so sure of getting 7%-8% as forecast in the rosy scenarios they put out, why don’t they take the risk instead of foisting it on tax payers?
One one side, fat cat Wall Street bail outs. On the other, guaranteed fat cat pension payments.
No wonder 50% of the people don’t bother to vote at all.
CalSTRS is in trouble? Color me shocked.
What do all these dominoes have in common? Why they all seem to be slush funds for democratic operatives.
And none other than our very own St. Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum is involved in all of it.
http://theava.com/archives/5298
When will people ever start going to jail for this stuff?
< When will people ever start going to jail for this stuff?
Ummm. I dunno.
When hell freezes over?
When pigs fly?
When Democrats get a conscience?
chuck reed has ruined san jose, he has been here 13 years and san jose budget problems are now 10-11 years.. he thinks he is GOD with others pension, then why is his and council in Calpers. RID the city of the incompetance at the top before laying off the low level workers. chuckie is a union buster.
Lets be honest here .. chuck is just like the rest of them. he lies and cheats everyday. He is out to scam every penny he can and position himself to gain more and more. If he was honest he would come clean about all the graft and lies.
The public to busy and naive to believe these guys are just like the guys who ran Enron, madoff, or whomever. They are the same doing the sam scams because they pay really well. When wall street was cooking the books there was so much money they could not spend it fast enough. They do not care who they get the money and power they are like addicts they just have to have it.
What Americans need to do is make the hard choices just like you do in your own house. Pay your bills stop spending and get rid of the junk you do not need. Fire the guys all of them that lead to this and no matter what they say do not believe them. Hire people who do the right thing because its the right thing to do and not because they were paid under the table.
Reed the council city manager should all be kicked out of office today and replaced with people who will do the right thing. stop buying the games about Obama did it, buy gold the sky is falling whatever junk they tell you to make you worry that if you do not listen to them you will never eat again. they all need to go.
Ad hominem attacks. Any specific acts of malfeasance by Mayor read that you can point to?