On Monday, new online news publication OurLA.org published a list of 286 retirees who are receiving pensions of $100,000 or more from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund. Says editor Ron Kaye:

LA taxpayers are on the hook to pay $1 billion next year and more than twice that in four years to keep the city’s pension funds solvent.

With pensions of up to 90 percent of the highest pay, the cost for Fire and Police pensions could be 80 cents on the dollar of current payroll for those services within a few years.

Find the list here.

Be sure to read Steve Greenhut’s excellent column in this past Sunday’s Orange County Register titled “Time for pushback on pensions.”

Since CFFR first posted “The CalPERS $100,000 Pension Club” list on April 29, a number of newspapers and bloggers have been posting lists of members in their local $100,000 Pension Clubs. Thus far, the list of lists includes (in no particular order)  Los Angeles, Fullerton, Sonoma County, Watsonville, San Luis Obispo County (and also here), San Jose, Humboldt County, Alameda, San Diego, Sacramento, and San Francisco.

And they’re being published in other states, too — like  New York and Rhode Island.

The California Report, a production of KQED Public Radio in Los Angeles, aired an interview today with CFFR president Keith Richman. Here’s the show’s promo:

California officials haven’t quite figured a way out of our current budget mess. But already, the next big budget buster is on the horizon. It’s the system of retirement benefits guaranteed to public sector employees. Reporter: Rob Schmitz

Listen to the interview online here. The show was broadcast statewide on these stations.

Download the audio (MP3)

This video news report features Scott Lang, the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who gets blunt about the impact that public employee pensions and health benefits are having on communities everywhere. “It’s absolute insanity,” he says about pensions. “There isn’t the money … If you put your ear to the tracks, you can hear it coming.”

The Boston Globe column by Sam Allis that’s referred to in the video can be read here. It’s where Lang calls the pensions “unsustainable.”

For background on the zoo references, see this humorous entry by reporter Steve Wiegand on the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert blog.

An editorial in today’s Contra Costa Times titled “Contra Costa judge’s pension ruling is a huge victory for the public” talks about the importance of CFFR’s recent court victory.

Last week a Contra Costa Superior Court judge dismissed a retired county deputy sheriff’s legal challenge to the release of names and pension amounts of former county employees. CFFR had requested the data from the Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Association as part of its ongoing statewide effort to publicize names and pension amounts of former public employees who receive pensions of $100,000 or more per year.

CFFR was represented in court by Timothy Bittle, director of legal affairs for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest taxpayer organization. Also joining in the lawsuit on the side of disclosure were the Contra Costa Times, the Los Angeles Times and the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

“I am very pleased with this ruling. It confirms the right of taxpayers to know how their tax dollars are being spent,” said CFFR president and founder Keith Richman.

“We finally have sunshine on generous pensions negotiated in closed sessions away from public view,” added CFFR vice president Marcia Fritz.

Both Richman and Fritz expressed appreciation to the Jarvis Taxpayers Association for representing CFFR in the proceedings.

Here’s the article by reporter Chris Rizo that appeared on the Legal Newsline website on July 4, 2009:

Calif. judge orders release of public pension data

California’s leading taxpayers’ rights group says the public scored a major legal victory this week when a judge ruled that a county’s pension records are not entirely confidential.

The judge ruled that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a public pension watchdog group, are entitled to a list of names and total retirement benefits for all Contra Costa County employees receiving an annual pension of at least $100,000.

Retired Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriff Donna Irwin sued the county retirement board, claiming that releasing her pension amount was an invasion of privacy.

Attorneys for the taxpayers’ group intervened in the case, arguing that unlike the IRA and 401k plans of private citizens, public employee defined benefit plans pay a guaranteed amount that are funded by taxpayers.

“The public interest in knowing how public money is spent, outweighs any embarrassment public employees might feel from the disclosure of their retirement benefits,” said Tim Bittle, director of legal affairs for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

In his ruling Wednesday, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Barry Baskin ordered the records released, saying a “transparent government is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

In addition to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, the Contra Costa Times, the Los Angeles Times and the California Newspaper Publishers Association also joined the lawsuit.

Baskin was appointed to the bench by former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2002. He currently serves as a civil fast track trial judge.