CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz was on the CBS Evening News again last night. Here are the segment’s opening comments:
When the angry citizens of Bell, California, forced their outrageously overpaid city manager and police chief to resign, it may be the best thing that ever happened to the two. Consider the pension now due city manager Robert Rizzo.
“His lifetime pension will be roughly $30 million,” said Marcia Fritz of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.
And the pension due police chief Randy Adams.
“His lifetime pension will be more like $15 to $17 million,” said Fritz.
But it’s taxpayers in other cities who will be shelling out for these lavish pensions because in California every city or county an employee worked for has to pick up a portion of the pension. And the pension is based on the final year’s salary alone, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone.
For more, read the entire transcript here or watch the video below:
CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz appeared on NBC Nightly News last night commenting on the lavish pensions that will be awaiting the highly-paid officials of the City of Bell when they retire:
Pension data supplied by Marcia was also used by the CBS Evening News. CFFR was credited in the tagline under the info, which appears about halfway through the segment.
CFFR’s vice president Jack Dean appeared Sunday on the weekly public affairs show News Conference hosted by veteran KNBC reporter Conan Nolan. The show airs on Channel 4 in the Los Angeles market immediately following NBC’s Meet the Press. Appearing on the segment prior to Dean was former California governor Gray Davis, who signed the pension-boosting SB400 into law in 1999.
California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown appeared Friday evening on Fox 11 News in Los Angeles to discuss pension reform in the wake of pay and pension issues raised in the City of Bell:
Here’s another good story — this time from KNBC-TV Channel 4 — that details the huge pensions involved in the Bell brouhaha using calculations provided by Marcia Fritz, president of CFFR.
The pay and pension brouhaha in the City of Bell kept CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz and vice president Jack Dean busy during the past week dealing with media. Marcia was instrumental in calculating and providing projected pension costs to the media, which helped to shift the focus from exorbitant salaries alone to long-term pension obligations as well. If Bell city manager Robert Rizzo retires and lives another 30 years, he could collect about $30,000,000 over the life of his pension.
Here’s a good summary of the situation reported by Rebecca Hall on KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles:
AB 155 has stalled in the Legislature, but commentator Ginger Rutland of The Sacramento Bee says there is reason to remain vigilant – bad bills have a way of resurfacing:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s weekly radio address was hosted this week by his Special Advisor for Jobs and Economic Growth, David Crane:
TRANSCRIPT OF COMMENTS BY DAVID CRANE:
Hello, this is David Crane, special advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for jobs and economic growth, filling in for the Governor with another California Report.
When Governor Schwarzenegger came into office seven years ago, he immediately zeroed-in on the single biggest threat to your government’s fiscal health, its unsustainable pension system.
Over the last 10 years, pension costs for state workers have gone up more than 2,000 percent, crowding out spending on colleges, parks, health, the environment and other progressive programs.
More cuts are in store for those programs because pension costs are scheduled to more than double to $10 billion per year, and that’s the optimistic case because if the stock market itself doesn’t double every ten years, those costs will be even higher.
Worse, pension debt has been hidden from you through evasive accounting by our pension funds that would make even Wall Street blush.
A recent Stanford study shows that California’s pension debt is really half-a-trillion dollars, almost five times the amount officially reported.
That debt was never disclosed to you, much less approved by you, but you are paying for it now and your children will pay even more.
Let me give you just one example. This year, our state will spend more on retirement benefits than it will spend on the 33 campuses and 670,000 students that make up the UC and CSU systems, perversely causing student fees to rise 200 percent at the same time that class offerings are being cut.
This path, set in place in 1999 by a previous administration and the legislature at that time and sustained by misleading pension fund accounting, is simply wrong.
That is why Governor Schwarzenegger has fought tirelessly to address the pension problem.
He knows that failure to fix our pension system means an end to progressive programs or higher taxes, or both.
This week, our state took an important step toward reform.
The Governor reached tentative contract agreements with four state employee unions that include rolling back those 1999 pension increases and requiring increased employee contributions towards their pensions.
Many people said something like this could never happen.
So the Governor’s action is precedent setting, and could trigger similar action by California’s other public employee unions and in states across our nation.
It’s great news, but it’s only a first step.
That’s because California needs comprehensive pension reform, and that includes changes that must be adopted immediately by the legislature, including:
· Rolling back that 1999 expansion of pension benefits
· A permanent increase in employee pension contributions
· An end to the practice of pension spiking and
· Truthful accounting that discloses to you the costs, risks and debts arising from our pension systems.
This week it became clear, the time for pension reform is now.
Every day pension reform is delayed is a day that increases debt and means even greater cuts to progressive programs.
The four unions that agreed to change this week understand the wisdom in reaching a compromise, for the good of the people.
Our lawmakers need to be reminded of the same message, and also of the simple message that one cannot be progressive and at the same time be opposed to pension reform.
Thank you for watching, and thank you for listening.
You can find the press release and a downloadable MP3 audio file here.
This NBC Bay Area Editorial commentary by Suzanne Shaw titled “California’s Pension Crisis: Are the Golden Years Tarnishing the Golden State?” ran on Friday, June 4 (read the text of the editorial here):
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger discusses the crisis in the public pension system in his weekly address, calling it “the single biggest threat to our state’s fiscal health and future.”
The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility has updated its CalPERS $100,000 Pension Clubsearchable database, and the list has increased in size by almost 50% — to over 9,100 members — compared to just a little over a year ago.
“The majority of new $100K Club members are public safety workers,” says Marcia Fritz, president of CFFR. “City budgets are being strained to keep more cops on the street — easy street.”
The updated elite club list now includes 330 retired state prison guards, 300 retired CHP officers, 175 retired state firefighters, and 90 retired DOJ agents.
Comment made by California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman at a recent Orange County Register editorial board interview: “The era of a defined benefit program is over.”
In this short video clip from Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company, John Stossel discusses with host Stuart Varney how high-paying government jobs and pension costs are hurting state governments across the country. Says Varney, “The extraordinary pension payments to retired government workers is the single biggest issue in the insolvency of California.”
CalPERS will hold its second ”California Retirement Dialogue” in Los Angeles this Friday, February 12. The first of the two conferences was held in Sacramento on January 29, and it provided lots of sparks, according to an account in The Sacramento Bee by Dale Kasler and Jon Ortiz – especially during an interchange between panelists Dave Low, a lobbyist for the California School Employees Association, and David Crane, economic advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The day-long event is open to the public. You can learn more about the conference, review the agenda and register on the CalPERS website.
The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility has updated its CalPERS $100,000 Pension Club 
CalPERS will hold its second ”California Retirement Dialogue” in Los Angeles this Friday, February 12. The first of the two conferences was held in Sacramento on January 29, and it provided lots of sparks, according to 
