EXCERPT Public outrage over lavish government employee compensation and pensions is becoming more heated as new revelations about excesses seem to crop up every week. The latest: Newport Beach, California, where some lifeguards have compensation packages that exceed $200,000 and where these "civil servants" can retire with lucrative government pensions at age 50.
Newport Beach has two groups of lifeguards. Seasonal tower lifeguards cover Newport’s seven miles of beach during the busy summer months. Part-time seasonal guards make $16-22 per hour with no benefits. They are the young people who man the towers and do the lion’s share of the rescues. Another group of highly compensated full-time staff work year-round and seldom, if ever, climb into a tower......... the typical Daily Deployment Model in the winter for these lifeguards is 10 hours per day for four days each week, mainly spent driving trucks around, painting towers, ordering uniforms and doing basic office work—none are actually manning lifeguard towers.
........last year the top earner received $211,000 in pay and benefits, including a $400 sun protection allowance. In 2010 all but one of the city’s full-time lifeguard staff had annual compensation packages worth over $120,000. Not bad pay for a lifeguard - but what makes these jobs most attractive is the generous retirements. One recently retired lifeguard, age 51, receives a government retirement of over $108,000 per year—for the rest of his life. He will make well over $3 million in retirement if he lives to age 80.
In 1999, California legislators, including many Republicans, felt very generous with the public's tax dollars and created "three at fifty" for public safety workers. SB 400 allowed these government employees to retire as early as age 50, well over a decade before their counter-parts in the private sector, and calculate their annual retirement pay at three percent per year or 90% of their final year's pay.
With the ability to spike final year's pay based on over-time, vacation and sick leave time, uniform allowances, etc., many former government employees now earn more retired than when they worked. There was a domino effect of this incredibly generous law resulting in local communities jumping on board to stay "competitive" by offering local public safety personnel, including lifeguards, the same great deal. Thousands of state and local employees are locked into generous pension contracts which the courts have decided cannot be broken despite the lack of budgets to pay for them.
According to a Stanford University study, California taxpayers are facing a pension liability that could exceed $500 billion, a figure the non-partisan Little Hoover Commission says will "crush" government.
As bad as Newport Beach's situation is, it pales in comparison to some other cities in California. The city of Fresno currently spends 53 cents of every payroll dollar on pensions. The state average is 31 percent and is expected to rise significantly in the next few years. --SNIP--
SOURCE http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Reu//b//2009%5C243%5C254f62a0-a420-4f58-b614-1b2fd0b8bd1b@news.ap.org.jpg
” In 1999, California legislators, including many Republicans, felt very generous with the public’s tax dollars and created “three at fifty” for public safety workers. SB 400 allowed these government employees to retire as early as age 50, well over a decade before their counter-parts in the private sector, and calculate their annual retirement pay at three percent per year or 90% of their final year’s pay. “
BK cit-tay ;-)
Now we are finding out that not only the professional poor, and the illegals from Metico have been sucking off our tax $’s, they have been joined for decades by the tax sucking city/county/state check collectors posing as public workers.