Posts Tagged: CalPERS
News
The state Supreme Court, with four similar cases on the backburner, gave few signs during recent oral arguments on a labor-union challenge to Gov. Brown’s pension reform that it’s ready to take on the “California Rule” preventing pension cuts.
Opinion
OPINION: Another round of alarmist commentary is being spread by those who begrudge a secure retirement for those who teach in our classrooms or heroically labor on the front lines of wildfires. Amidst their negativity Californians may have missed a bit of positive news last month. The state’s two largest pension funds reported end-of-year investment returns that again exceeded their assumed average annual rate of return.
Recent News
The new CalPERS president, Priya Mathur, lost her board seat this week, defeated by a Corona police sergeant, Jason Perez, who wants to shift the $360 billion investment fund toward higher yields that secure pensions with less focus on social issues. Mathur, a Bay Area Rapid Transit District analyst serving on the board since 2002, rose to the leadership post in January.
News
A bill by state Sen. Steven Glazer, D-Orinda, giving new state workers the option new University of California workers received two years ago, a 401(k)-style plan rather than a pension, is opposed by unions and soon may be opposed by CalPERS. More than a third of eligible new UC employees have chosen a 401(k)-style plan. Instead of a guaranteed lifetime monthly pension check, the 401(k) plan that replaced pensions in most of the private sector uses individual tax-deferred investments to build a retirement fund.
News
CalPERS wants unions and local government groups to come up with legislation that would retroactively correct a mistake that could lead to more pension cuts, like the 63 percent reduction last July in pensions promised about 200 former employees of LA Works.
News
Monrovia’s city manager, Oliver Chi, told the city council the budget could absorb the CalPERS employer pension rate increases enacted in 2012, 2013, and 2014 — but a large fourth rate increase last December could push the city into insolvency.
News
A worried Herald Fire Protection District board discussed the possibility last week that the fee for leaving CalPERS may be around $400,000, an amount some members fear could push the small district in southern Sacramento County into bankruptcy. Earlier this month, Transparent California reported that the suburban Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District has 216 retirees receiving annual pensions of $100,000 or more, and a dozen of those are $200,000, or more.
News
CalPERS is a leader in forming a first-ever global alliance of large investors that would use its combined shareholder clout to engage companies with the most carbon emissions, believed by scientists to contribute to climate change. The CalPERS board was told last week that its staff is working with others to complete the plan in time for an introduction at a United Nations investor meeting next month in Berlin, followed by a public launch in November at a UN climate change meeting in Bonn.
News
If you don’t give city employees a pension, what happens? San Diegans voted five years ago this month to switch all new city hires, except police, from pensions to 401(k)-style individual investment plans, becoming one of the first big cities to take the plunge.
News
New York state pension systems are better funded than California state pension systems, currently take a smaller bite out of state and local government budgets, and still provide pension benefits well above the national average. How do they do it?
The California Supreme Court. Standing, from left: Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Justice Carol A. Corrigan, Justice Goodwin H. Liu, and Justice Leondra R. Kruger. Seated, from left: Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar (Retired August 31, 2017), Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, and Justice Ming W. Chin. (Photo: State Supreme Court)
