Pricey pension lists bring issue out front

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The generous -- and unsustainable -- level of public employee pensions in California is finally getting some long-overdue attention on two fronts:

Cities, counties and other government entities feel the pinch now but expect serious pain for 2010-11 because of pension funds' huge investment losses. Stanislaus County will pay more than $36 million in pension costs in 2009-10 and the amount could double the following year. The city of Modesto is bracing for a multimillion-dollar increase in its obligations to the California Public Employees' Retirement System next year.

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. At the top is retired Modesto City Schools Superintendent Jim Enochs, who receives almost $23,800 a month. Educators' pensions are creating less controversy around the state because the standard retirement age is 60, when they are eligible for 2 percent of final compensation for each year worked. Those who work past 60 and for more than 30 years can receive an additional 0.4 percent a year. Enochs retired at age 72 after a 50-year career.

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.

A retired deputy in Contra Costa County has gone to court to prevent the release of the information.

The Stanislaus County Employees' Retirement Association has not provided the requested information about its top pensioners. It should.

The point behind making the information public is not to single out individuals so much as to identify the practices that have made some of these pensions so high. These include "spiking" -- adding accumulated vacation time and other benefits to the final year's salary used to determine pension amounts.

Furthermore, many of those receiving the highest pensions were in positions to negotiate the labor contracts that have contributed to pension bloating. Under typical "me-too" clauses, the executives benefit from the same provisions they negotiate for others. There's no incentive for restraint.

Finally, many agencies pay all or part of employees' retirement contributions as well as the employers' portion. All that is taxpayer money, though not readily visible when salaries are released.

California's generous pension plans date to the late 1990s, when state legislators and other elected officials naively bought the argument that because the investment returns were so high, these perks could be provided at no cost.

That might have been true for that moment, but it's abundantly clear that those overly-generous defined-benefit pensions cannot be sustained. Agencies should not and cannot renege on the benefits they have guaranteed current workers and retirees, but they must immediately start negotiating more realistic pensions for future employees, at ages more consistent with those in the private sector and with current life expectancies.