Posted on 06/16/2010 3:34:00 PM PDT by SmithL
The California Highway Patrol officers' union and three other state labor groups have agreed to contract terms with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that roll back pension benefits for new state hires and increase all employees' retirement contributions.
The deals would also protect the unions' members from the threat of minimum wage when lawmakers don't enact a state budget on time and eventually add a top step pay increase.
"We're not blind or deaf to the unique times in California. We want to get the necessary discussion of (pension) reform behind us," said Jon Hamm of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen.
The contracts would cover more than 25,000 state employees including patrol officers, firefighters, health and social service professionals and psychiatric technicians. The tense negotiations wrapped up around midnight on Tuesday, a source with knowledge of the talks told The Bee. It's the first time that several unions have coordinated their negotiations.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
401K with match.
Budget crisis averted.
hahhaha what about old hires???
The grocery workers unions did the same thing to their new hires a few years back.
Sold out the new hires to keep theirs.
Anyway, it’s progress in the right direction.
Has to be done at some point. No, it’s not noble to screw us young folks, be we all knew that this was going to happen to everyone behind the boomers.
What about the BIGGEST PIGS OF ALL the freakin CA teacher unions? This is a small proportion of the cartels.
“The contracts would cover more than 25,000 state employees including patrol officers, firefighters, health and social service professionals and psychiatric technicians.”
It is significant but it will not solve the $51 billion problem of unfunded pensions.
Meg Whitman coming...
lol I think this is like Obama cutting 200 million off of the budget. It is a joke and California is one of the first states to fall in the coming months.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with it.
I think it’s a selfish and despicable act on their part.
Everyone working for the gov’t needs to take an equal “hit”. There shouldn’t be the attitude that “some animals are more equal than others” when it comes to gov’t employees.
Good luck.
FRegards,
SZ
I would rather they tell me at 40 that they lied and I can kiss my SS goodbye than mislead me and tax me another 30 years.
Gotta love the fine print.
Here's where California taxpayers money goes. Why should the taxpayers as CA voters honor these agreements? It's a suicide pact. Bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries.....
What Calpers failed to disclose, however, was that (1) the state budget was on the hook for shortfalls should actual investment returns fall short of assumed investment returns, (2) those assumed investment returns implicitly projected the Dow Jones would reach roughly 25,000 by 2009 and 28,000,000 by 2099, unrealistic to say the least (3) shortfalls could turn out to be hundreds of billions of dollars, (4) Calpers’s own employees would benefit from the pension increases and (5) members of Calpers’s board had received contributions from the public employee unions who would benefit from the legislation.
Had such a flagrant case of non-disclosure occurred in the private sector, even a sleepy SEC and US Attorney would have noticed.
======================================
Calpers Rocked by 'Pay to Play'
WSJ, 10/15/09, By CRAIG KARMIN AND PETER LATTMAN
EXCERPT America's largest public-pension fund, Calpers, revealed that a former board member had reaped more than $50 million in fees for arranging investments that could saddle state taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The disclosure deepens concerns that alleged conflicts of interest are undermining state retirement funds.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System said it is launching a "special review" into payments by money managers-- including billionaire Leon Black's Apollo Management LP -- to firms including Arvco Financial Ventures LLC. Arvco is headed by Al Villalobos, who served on Calpers's board from 1993 to 1995.
SOURCE http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125553138534384951.html
=================================================
REFERENCE Julio Ramirez Jr, a San Marino businessman with long-standing connections to LA City Hall has pleaded guilty to criminal securities fraud as part of a probe of alleged pay-to-play corruption at a NY state gov't pension fund....... Ramirez is a former employee of Wetherly Capital Group, an LA investment marketing firm that allegedly gave kickbacks to a top political advisor of disgraced ex-New York state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
REFERENCE Dav-Wetherly Financial, L P
11601 Wilshire Blvd # 300
Los Angeles, CA 90025-0509
Location Type: Single Location
Est. Annual Sales: $68,000
Est.# of Employees: 1
An Israeli company-----Giza Venture Capital----- paid DAV-Wetherly Financial, of Los Angeles, a substantial finder's fee after it got authority to manage $20 million in NY state pension funds in 2005. ... DAV-Wetherly, in turn, secretly gave part of the fee to a Connecticut-based company run by NY political insiders. The Israeli connection is suspicious----a crooked individual can debark in Tel Aviv from anywhere in the world, deposit a suitcase of cash in any bank, and no one asks where it came from, or whether taxes were paid on it.
=======================================
On May 12, 2009, the SEC announced charges against Julio Ramirez, Jr., who was formerly affiliated with LA broker-dealers DAV/Wetherly Financial, L.P. and Park Hill Group LLC, in connection with a multi-million dollar kickback scheme involving New York's largest pension fund.
In an amended complaint attached to a motion filed today in federal district court in Manhattan, the SEC alleges that Ramirez participated in the fraudulent scheme by helping his friend and associate Henry "Hank" Morris extract kickback payments from Aldus Equity Partners, an investment management firm that was seeking to win investment business from the New York State Common Retirement Fund.
The SEC has previously charged Morris and David Loglisci with orchestrating this wide-ranging scheme to enrich Morris and others and has alleged that Aldus and one of its founding principals, Saul Meyer, also participated in the scheme by agreeing to pay kickbacks to Morris. According to the SEC's amended complaint, Ramirez facilitated Morris's scheme by contacting Meyer and making clear to him that Aldus must pay a kickback to Morris to secure an investment from the Retirement Fund.
Although Aldus was already negotiating with the Retirement Fund's investment staff about the proposed investment at the time, Aldus agreed to kick back 35% of its management fees to a shell entity run by Morris. Morris in turn paid Ramirez a portion of those fees. As a result of the quid pro quo, Aldus secured the Retirement Fund's emerging fund portfolio business, and Ramirez shared in the profits even though he performed no legitimate services.
The SEC's amended complaint alleges that Ramirez aided and abetted violations of Section Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, and Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The complaint seeks permanent injunctions against future violations of the federal securities laws, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and financial penalties. The SEC's investigation is continuing. In a parallel criminal action, the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York today announced the unsealing of criminal charges against Ramirez.
See Litigation Release No. 20963 (March 19, 2009), Litigation Release No. 21001 (April 15, 2009) and Litigation Release No. 21018 (April 30, 2009).
SOURCE http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr21036.htm
So the “Union” is creating a group of 2nd class citizens amongst their own??
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