Posts Tagged: employer

Brown hits San Diego, Faulconer hits Sacramento

Gov. Brown speaks at a San Diego employer forum. (Photo: Adriana Heldiz, Voice of San Diego)

by SARA LIBBY, Voice of San Diego posted 09.01.2017

In the nearly seven years he’s been governor, Jerry Brown’s been frank about why he’s supported bold criminal justice reform, like Prop. 57, the 2016 ballot measure that, among other things, offers sentence credits to inmates who take advantage of rehabilitative programming. “I helped screw things up, but I helped unscrew things,” he said Friday at a forum put on by the California Prison Industry Authority, the state agency that provides work assignments and job training for state prisoners.

State pension systems: NY outperforms California

The CalPERS board of governors during a meeting at the pension system's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS)

by ED MENDEL posted 05.01.2017

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?

CalSTRS eyes hike in death benefit

Students in a classroom get instruction from a teacher. (Photo: Areipa.It, Shutterstock)

by ED MENDEL posted 09.09.2015

Because the system is underfunded, the CalSTRS board has made no inflation adjustment in the death benefit since 2002. The board was told that it could have increased the death benefit by about 34.7 percent during the period.

Calpensions: President Obama said he has directed his labor department to propose rules showing states how to create what in California could be an “automatic IRA,” a payroll deduction that puts money into a tax-deferred savings plan unless workers opt out. The rules are expected to answer a key question: Is Secure Choice exempt from a federal retirement law, ERISA, that not only has employer administrative costs but may also expose employers to liability for failed investments and other problems?

CalPERS eyes long-term rate hike

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

by ED MENDEL posted 06.02.2015

CalPERS is considering small increases in employer and employee rates over decades to reduce the risk of big investment losses, a policy that also would lower an earnings forecast critics say is too optimistic. The proposal is a response to the “maturing” of a CalPERS system that soon will have more retirees than active workers. From two active workers for each retiree in 2002, the ratio fell to 1.45 to one by 2012 and is expected to be 0.8 to 0.6 to one in the next decades.

States eye CalPERS pension model

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

by ED MENDEL posted 12.08.2014

Calpensions: A California plan to give private-sector workers a state-run retirement savings plan is nearing $1 million in contributions, the goal set to pay for a market analysis to help design the program. Although the California plan is still in the formative stage, last week the Illinois legislature approved a plan based on the California model, even using the same name, “Secure Choice.”

Bankrupt San Bernardino announced an agreement with CalPERS last week to pay off an unprecedented pension debt owed for skipping payments to the pension fund for a year — $13.5 million, plus several million more in penalties and interest. Details of the agreement reached in closed mediation were not released. But the city said in a court filing the CalPERS agreement “will help form the basis” for a debt-cutting plan needed to exit bankruptcy.

Full funding of the troubled California State Teachers Retirement System has been approved by the Legislature, with most of the additional $5 billion coming from school districts that get no offsetting money from the state.

It had a name, Secure Choice, and now an attempt to create the first state-run “automatic IRA” for workers with no retirement plan has its first donors, authorization to hire consultants and a favorable response from a wide range of groups asked for advice. The author of the program, Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, may become the next leader of the state Senate. So the plan being developed by a nine-member board could have a strong advocate when it comes back to the Legislature for approval.

Most California public pension funds have the power to raise annual employer rates when they need more money. The California State Teachers Retirement System, a century old this year, is an outlier that needs legislation to raise rates. As lawmakers at the Capitol struggled with budget cuts during a deep economic recession, pleas for a CalSTRS rate increase were not acknowledged with a legislative hearing until last year.