Yesterday CFFR’s vice president  Jack Dean was a guest on Martha Montelongo’s radio show on CRN Digital Talk Radio. You can play or download the show here.

CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz was a guest yesterday afternoon on the John and Ken Show on KFI Radio in Los Angeles. You can listen online – it’s the first 15-minute segment.

The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility is suspending for now its efforts to obtain signatures to qualify its New Employees Benefits Reform Initiative for the November 2010 ballot, according to Marcia Fritz, CFFR’s president. The initiative, if passed by voters, would have saved the state and local agencies $14 billion in the first six years and over $500 billion within 30 years. CFFR will continue to advocate for statewide pension reform and encourage the Legislature to reduce defined benefits to a sustainable level for new workers and to ensure that pension promises for current workers and retirees can be kept.

Polls show an increasing majority of voters prefer a 401(k) plan for public workers instead of a defined benefit plan. Financial backers tell us the same thing,” says Fritz.  “If legislators do nothing to reduce pension costs next year, we will try again to qualify a pension reform initiative — except one that provides for a defined contribution plan, not a defined benefit plan.” 

CFFR is also very troubled at two events that came to its attention last month, says Fritz. 

- After the Board of Retirement of the Contra Costa Employee Retirement Association was told by its legal counsel that its benefit calculations are illegal, it did nothing to cease making the payments. The majority of the Retirement Board’s members have conflicts of interest in benefit calculation decisions. CFFR’s current reform initiative does nothing to reform retirement board compositions to minimize conflicts of interest and ensure the discharge of their fiduciary duties with fairness and integrity.

- In 2002, San Francisco voters approved a Charter Amendment that allowed the City to provide new, extraordinary pension benefits to public safety workers.  Ballot language stated “no cash would be required since the City’s Retirement System currently has a large surplus and that if the employer is required to make contributions “the City will negotiate a cost-sharing agreement with the police officers and firefighters to cover all or part of the cost of providing the additional retirement benefits through employee contribution.” Soon after its passage, pension costs skyrocketed and a very small fraction of the increase is being borne by safety workers. CFFR’s current reform initiative requires voter approval future benefit increases, but does nothing to ensure that ballot language is transparent and free from deception.

CFFR will continue to encourage local efforts to rein in pension costs, says Fritz. Citizen organizations in several cities are attempting to qualify ballot measures, and several city manager groups are meeting to reach consensus on regionally uniform lower benefits for future labor contract negotiations. CalPERS has conducted public forums to express its support to agencies to handle the state-wide pension crisis locally.

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.”

Tune in to John Stossel’s show on the Fox Business Network this Thursday evening to see a special guest appearance by Steven Greenhut, author of Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.

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.

CFFR’s president Marcia Fritz appeared on CNN this morning discussing the growing public pension crisis facing our nation’s cities and states. She was interviewed by correspondent Carol Costello.

The story aired on the network’s American Morning show which is broadcast weekdays from 3-6 am Pacific Time. Most Californians were probably still sleeping when the segment aired, but fortunately it was captured on video:

The text version of this story is available on the CNN site here.