Audit fires up New Orleans’ pension controversy
Should taxpayers be responsible for soaring costs in a pension fund that has been mismanaged by its trustees, many of whom are government workers elected by their colleagues to run the retirement...
View ArticlePensions: When you can’t trust the trustees
Last week the board of trustees of Calpers, dominated by six beneficiaries of the pension fund, voted to essentially undo some of Jerry Brown’s modest 2012 pension reforms with their liberal...
View ArticleSuperintendents behaving badly
If a community can’t trust a public employee, can its elected representatives fire that person? A lawyer defending a former Brookfied, Conn., superintendent on Tuesday argued the answer is no, not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Philly goes nuclear, cancels teachers’ contract
In a startling move against an intransigent union, the special commission that manages the Philadelphia school system has cancelled the system’s teachers’ contract and imposed reductions on benefits...
View ArticleWatch door to bankruptcy slam shut to protect pensions
In the wake of Judge Klein’s ruling last week that Stockton could cut pension debt in bankruptcy, fiscal reformers and conservative commentators were quick to assume, somewhat naively, that this ruling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Health care + pensions equal insolvent NJ
New Jersey has gotten a lot of publicity lately because Chris Christie has balked at meeting the state’s extraordinary pension burden, arguing that further reform of the system is necessary. But as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Philly: More dubious budget reporting from NYTimes
The NY Times finally decided to jump in with its take on the controversial story of Philadelphia’s school reform commission cancelling the teachers’ contract. Not surprisingly, in a story largely...
View ArticleCalifornia: Premium pay for ordinary duties
The LA Times has a follow-up story on the August vote by the Calpers board to approve 99 categories of additional pay that government employees in the Golden State can use to boost the amount of their...
View ArticleColorado court: Things go better without COLA
Something that initially escaped my attention. The Colorado Supreme Court recently restored a measure of fiscal sanity to public sector retirement law in the Centennial State by reversing a Court of...
View ArticleHow pension reform shrinks R.I. deficit
Rhode Island Governor-elect Gina Raimondo rose to political prominence engineering a difficult pension reform in the Ocean State back in 2011. Now one of her challenges as governor will be grappling...
View Article
