Dear Journalists, We have a challenge for you: Try to find a single state or city that provides richer post-employment insurance to retired prison guards and police than CA, LA or SF, which supply unlimited health insurance to retired employees and their spouses even when they are on Medicare or entitled to Covered California.* Let … Continue reading A Challenge To CA Journalists
Category: OPEB
Other Post-Employment Benefits
$1.7 Billion Of Gold In UC’s Ivory Tower
Dear Legislators,As you prepare for the release in early January of Governor Newsom's proposed 2021-22 budget, consider this: The University of California is incurring $1.7 billion of unnecessary expense each year. That's about half of the amount you allocated to UC from the state's General Fund in 2020-21. To understand how that's happening and how … Continue reading $1.7 Billion Of Gold In UC’s Ivory Tower
Ending CA’s Love Affair With Public Safety Unions
Dear CA State Legislators, You lead the country in spending on prison employees. After granting them six salary increases since 2010, you are spending >$5 billion/yr on salaries for 57,000 state prison employees attending to ~115,000 inmates. But that's not all. You also spend >$4 billion/yr on insurance subsidies for retired employees, the most expensive … Continue reading Ending CA’s Love Affair With Public Safety Unions
How CA Could Save ~$10 Billion A Year
Dear Legislators, Last night I posted a thread on Twitter explaining how CA unnecessarily spends a fortune on health subsidies for retired police, prison guards and other employees and the two steps required to fix that.Some of you are entitled to retiree health subsidies as a result of former employment with governments. I haven't explored … Continue reading How CA Could Save ~$10 Billion A Year
Breed And Garcetti Must Stand Up To Police Unions
LA and SF face large budget deficits because their mayors won't face up to police unions. The consequences for residents are terrible and there's an easy solution. LA and SF spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on extravagant subsidies for retired employees, the most expensive of which are retired police who can retire … Continue reading Breed And Garcetti Must Stand Up To Police Unions
A Tax Increase A Day
No sooner had the California Legislature convened yesterday than a bill was introduced to increase taxes again to raise $2.4 billion per year. But there's already an extra $2.4 billion in the state budget. In addition to pensions, the state supplies retired employees with expensive insurance subsidies that in 2019 cost $4.4 billion, $2.7 billion … Continue reading A Tax Increase A Day
LA Needn’t Sacrifice Public Safety
Today's LA Times reports the city is looking at layoffs of police officers because of a budget shortfall. But as we explain here, LA could save nearly $400 million per year by eliminating a rich subsidy for retired city employees that was rendered redundant by subsidies provided by the federally-funded Affordable Care Act in 2010 … Continue reading LA Needn’t Sacrifice Public Safety
More Profligacy At BART
COVID has hit the transportation sector hard. Recently, Delta and its unions agreed to temporarily reduce pay. But last week BART agreed to increase pay. Such profligacy isn't rare. Eg, BART also provides a redundant benefit known as "Retiree Medical Benefits" that annually costs $39 million, an amount equal to 21 percent of BART's expected … Continue reading More Profligacy At BART
Liberating Occupied California
Yesterday a GFCer wrote me to encourage immediate action on pension reform. In response I wrote, We don't expect pension reform to happen any time soon and certainly not before OPEB [retiree health insurance subsidies] reform, which we will attempt in 2021 with at best 50/50 odds of success. That doesn't mean we aren't working … Continue reading Liberating Occupied California
Direct-To-Citizen Information
We are starting to wonder if some journalists are viewing different state and local records than we are. Last week it was an article in the New York Times containing an unsupported assertion reported as fact, then the Los Angeles Times didn’t question an assertion by a LA Councilman about that city’s budget, then CALMatters omitted reference to state … Continue reading Direct-To-Citizen Information