Posted on 02/03/2018 1:56:27 PM PST by BenLurkin
When Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90% of her salary.
But like many cops and firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension.
A month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective, joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records show. But the city didn’t benefit much from the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two years, according to a Times analysis of city payroll data.
The couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their condo in Cabo San Lucas and starting a family theater production company with their daughter, according to Tia Morris’ Facebook posts and her self-published autobiography. They declined to comment for this story.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Police (and other) unions.
It’s just never enough, no matter how sweet it already is.
He spoke of a bus driver for our regional transit system (the "MBTA") who had just retired at the age of 50 with a pension of $97,000.
Not an engineer,not a director...a friggin' *bus driver*.
No wonder "public servants" vote 99% Rat!
I doubt it’s the driving that gets you, and that’s probably bad enough. It’s the people you have to deal with.
That pension is disgusting.
At $50k it would still be a great retirement income. They probably get medical and other benefits too.
I saw people do a similar thing at a big oil company. They didn’t collect retirement but they didn’t do a thing their last year or so because of CT or other “disability”. What a COS.
I worked for years in the ER of a large hospital located in a major city.Among the many faces we'd see as patients were the city's cops and firemen.To be honest we didn't see firemen often and when they *did* come in they usually had legitimate injuries or illnesses.
OTOH,when the cops would come in they had the silliest complaints imaginable...totally fraudulent and phony.And they would invariably ask for time off,which the doctors usually granted because we often needed them to control violent patients and visitors and refusing their requests might cause them to take their time answering our calls.
The doctors hated doing it but knew that refusal would have consequences for the entire department.
Make $300,000 as a BART (San Fran subway) JANITOR..??
http://www.ktvu.com/news/2-investigates/bart-janitors-270k-pay-raises-questions-2-investigates
He’d show up to work super early, duck into a tiny closet, stay there ALL DAY (playing on computer?), then return home after the sun went down —MASSIVE overtime and no one noticed.
He did that for MONTHS on end, 7 days a week.
Ancient Chinese seclet..!!
These deals are so patently unfair to taxpayers that we’re gonna have to go through a nearly universal wave of planned bankruptcies to free our municipalities and states of them.
Thanks for relating your experience.
When I was working in a corporate structured enterprise, I noticed that certain benefit policies could cause folks to take more paid/sick leave.
Some of those programs are capped out. You either use them or lose them.
Now I’d think the fire department would have some of the same policies, but who knows.
I can’t speak for you, but I hardly ever took sick days. When I left that job after 30 years, my sick leave was maxed out and had been for more than a decade. Even my paid leave was maxed out to the extent I could.
When I have a job, I work it.
It would bother me to observe what you had there.
The individuals didn’t make the rules. The union did.
The way to correct it is to change your policies for new hires.
Get them to sign an agreement spelling out exactly what the new compensation package will be.
If the union won’t buy in, then look for a way to privatize the work force.
Contract in another entity. Current employees could opt in for the lower salary, or they could be replaced.
Captain Tia Morris Retirement Celebration (invitation announcement from 2013): https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/428441
My company doesn’t have a published sick leave policy. Kind of surprising as we’re part of a multi-billion dollar multi-national.
It’s basically, if you’re sick, you’re sick but don’t abuse it.
I’m sure some people do. I’m getting a little older (mid 50’s and just don’t feel like powering through it like I used to. In the past, I’d usually go about 5 years between sick days. Now, if I’m sick, I stay home, but even still, it’s maybe 1-3 days a year.
Since I work from home, sometimes I just lay around and do some work, then take a nap.
Your correct. There will be a stampede of cities asking for bailouts.
Around me here I have tenants that are barely making ends meet, like SS at age 63 at $1000 a month. They want to work but all that’s out there for 62 or 63 year olds is minimum wage. They lost good careers and nothing like that anymore.
Now we got these sleazy ex-public servants that can’t get enough - millions and millions and not enough. We all pay for that in taxes. And we wonder why there’s only minimum wage left for us underlings !!
Promises made already will bankrupt us. Sorry, but those deals need to be stripped.
And there shouldn’t be any unions in public positions. Period.
The city actually likes the DROP programs. They don’t have to train new firefighters, they keep money in retirement accounts and keep interest, and when the firefighter does retire it’s usually 5- ten years into what he could have already been drawing retirement and his life span is decreased.
Where the problem comes in is when the city allows overtime to be used in determining the retirement amount. Let’s say a chief makes 100k$ a year but during his last five years works a ton of overtime and jacks his income to 150k. His retirement is figured off that. The fund can’t handle allot of those. And if the the city starts to hint they are going to shut it down then tons of people retire and draw the DROP funds all at once. It happened in Dallas. But they had been mismanaging the funds for a long time and got caught.
In case you havent noticed. Clubs of elites to themselves.
The cops and firefighters are blue and care about nobody but themselves.
Teachers and college academia are in their own way ilk too. They never get enough.
Inside the beltway politicians, exempt themselves from all they dictate to the rest of the country. Selfish.
Wall street and financial outfits, paying themselves in the mils.
And what is left is the 90% of the rest of us, the low class
to struggle at not much more than minimum wage.
That’s reasoned. I particularly like the nap idea. LOL
Look, even at $10.00/hr, that's $20,800 a year. That's a very nice chunk of change to lop on top of what I already have coming in.
I too think some of these folks are just too greedy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.