Assembly candidates Elizabeth Betancourt, left, and Megan Dahle. (Photo illustration by Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)A husband and wife team in the Legislature — again? On Nov. 5, voters in California’s sprawling 1st Assembly District will choose between Republican Megan Dahle and Democrat Elizabeth Betancourt in a special election.
On the USC campus, a view of the Suzanne Dowark Peck School of Social Work. (Photo: Kit Leong, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Last fall, the University of Southern California (USC) settled a federal class-action lawsuit filed by women alleging sexual misconduct by the former head gynecologist at the student health center, George Tyndall. Regarded by many as one of the largest settlements of its kind, the $215 million federal settlement covered every one of Tyndall’s USC patients who received women’s health services during a specific period.
The CalPERS board of governors during a meeting at the pension system's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS)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?
CalPERS' governing board during a 2013 meeting. (Photo: CalPERS board)Calpensions: New annual CalPERS reports no longer prominently display the pension debt of local governments as a percentage of pay, making it more difficult for the public to easily see the full employer pension cost.
Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and current Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed have more in common than their last names. Both have the same broad pension story. But last week, Atlanta had a very different ending.
Protesters picketed the recent appearance of pension-change advocates Chuck Reed and Carl DeMaio at the Reason summit. (Photo: Ed Mendel, Calpensions) Calpensions: One of the two initiatives filed by a pension reform group last week would cap state and local government spending on retirement benefits for most new hires at 11 percent of pay, much like a Utah pension reform five years ago.
A pension reform initiative filed last week requires voter approval of termination fees, the big upfront payment demanded by CalPERS when a plan is closed to new members. CalPERS says it needs the money to ensure payment of the pensions promised members who remain in the closed plan. The termination fee is calculated by dropping the pension fund earnings forecast from the current 7.5 percent to as low as 2.98 percent.
An elderly patient receiving health care at a hospital. (Photo: Photographee.eu, via Shutterstock)The LAO, noting that most of Brown’s plan bypasses the Legislature, says lawmakers should hold hearings on state worker retiree health care, going back to square one, 1961, when the benefit began. Times were different then. Workers were at risk of losing health coverage when they retired. Now state workers are eligible for federal Medicare at age 65.
For the new plan the state this fiscal year is paying $63.2 million (24.6 percent of pay) for the pensions of 1,407 judges (1,352 active). Judges Retirement System II is 95 percent funded with a debt or “unfunded liability” of $41.2 million.
Calpensions: A small but affluent Orange County city, with a current staff of only a half dozen employees, would have to pay about $3.6 million to leave CalPERS, the giant state pension system estimated two years ago. “I almost feel like just handing this to a reporter and saying, ‘Look at this.’