CFFR president Keith Richman was interviewed on June 24th by NBC. Watch here:

CFFR Board Member Jack Dean appeared yesterday on Martha Montelongo’s radio show to discuss the latest news on public employee pensions. The one-hour broadcast on CRN Digital Talk Radio was archived and can be downloaded or listened to online here. Dean is also president of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers (FACT) and publisher of PensionTsunami.com which carries the latest news on the pension issue on a daily basis.

Watch CFFR vice president Marcia Fritz’s appearance today on Stuart Varney’s show on the Fox Business Network:

Stuart Varney on Fox Business Channel

An excellent article in today’s Wall Street Journal by reporter Craig Karmin profiles the activity of the Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility and includes an interview with CFFR founder and president Keith Richman. It focuses on “The CalPERS $100,000 Pension Club” . . .

Marcia Fritz, vice president of CFFR, will be a guest on Stuart Varney’s show on Fox Business Network on Wednesday, June 24 to discuss the CalPERS $100,000 Pension Club and public employee pensions in general. The show airs nationwide from 1-2:00 pm ET (10-11:00 am Pacific) to more than 30 million homes.

UPDATE: Marcia has now been scheduled to also appear today on Neil Cavuto’s show on the Fox News Channel during the 4-5:00 ET time slot (1-2:00 pm Pacific) — most likely during the second half hour.

CFFR’s $100,000 Pension Club lists were the focus of an editorial in yesterday’s Modesto Bee  :

The generous — and unsustainable — level of public employee pensions in California is finally getting some long-overdue attention … a statewide group advocating pension reform has posted on the Internet lists of PERS (Public Employees’ Retirement System) and CalSTRS (State Teachers’ Retirement System) retirees receiving more than $100,000 a year and is pressing county retirement associations for the same information.

More than 5,000 PERS retirees get more than $100,000 annually. Many are retired public safety workers eligible for “3 at 50″ — 3 percent of their salary for each year worked, starting at age 50. Many other workers get 2.5 or 2.7 percent at age 55. The STRS list contains more than 3,000 names.  … Californians for Fiscal Responsibility, the pension reform group that published the PERS and STRS lists, is getting mixed reactions as it pushes for public release of the over-$100,000 recipients from county associations.

Read the entire editorial here.

A retired Contra Costa County deputy sheriff has filed a legal challenge to stop the release of names and pension amounts of former county employees who collect $100,000 or more per year. Last week, attorneys for Donna Irwin filed a request for a restraining order in Contra Costa Superior Court to block the release of the information by the Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Association to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (that’s us).

From an article by Lisa Vorderbrueggen in the Contra Costa Times:

The Irwin case is believed to be the first legal challenge to the release of pension data after the 2007 case brought by the Contra Costa Times against the City of Oakland. The court found that the salaries of government employees in California, including police officers, are a public record and must be available upon request to “ensure transparency.”

“Openness in government is essential to the functioning of a democracy,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in the 30-page opinion.

The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility contends the court’s ruling extends to the names and pension payments of former public employees.

“We believe the ruling covers pensions and a number of pension groups agree,” said Foundation co-founder and former Republican Assemblyman Keith Richman of Northridge.

Although public pension systems rely on investment earnings to help cover the costs, the weak economy has forced states, counties and other local jurisdictions to bolster their retirement accounts with general fund dollars.

Richman said publishing the pension payouts is key to educating taxpayers about what he called California’s “extravagant public employee benefits.” The foundation posts the pension data on its Web site as it becomes available.

Richman and his colleagues are working on a statewide ballot initiative that would ask voters to reduce public employee retirement benefits for future public employees, a move he estimated could save the state as much as $500 billion in the next three decades.

Proposed reforms include increasing the retirement age of 50 for public safety workers to 58. It would bump the eligibility for other employees to at least age 65, a figure consistent with the federal Social Security retirement age.

As an additional financial savings, Richman said, the increase in the retirement age would reduce local costs for retiree health care costs as retirees would qualify for federal Medicare at age 65.

The foundation also seeks an end to policies that allow employees to spike their pension benefits, sometimes to figures higher than what they earned while they worked.

“Throughout California, public agencies are paying 15 to 20 percent of their budgets on retirement costs and that’s only going to go up,” Richman said. “It’s unsustainable. Government entities will either go bankrupt, like the city of Vallejo, or they are going to die from 1,000 cuts in services.”

Read the entire story in the Contra Costa Times.

New York state has nearly 700 retired educators receiving annual pensions of $100,000 or more. This story by James Odato in the Albany Times Union gives the details. Of couse, that number pales in comparison to California’s list of more than 3,000 that CFFR obtained from CalSTRS.