I never understood how it was allowed for retiring public employees to juice their retirement benefit calculations in their last year with overtime, saved vacation and sick days.
Are the pension systems so deficient because of administrative bloat, bad tax bases and overly generous promised benefits without sufficient contributions that no amount of adjustment would reasonably make them whole? Would the pension systems around the country be in much better condition if the people gaming the system were just brought back into line with their average base pay?
Over time pay is Not calculated into PERS retirement compensation, vacation days accrued at time of retirement are either cashed out at that time or must be taken prior to retirement at the standard rate of compensation for that number of hours/days accumulated.
Only unused sick leave hours/days can be added to total retirement compensation, and it’s prorated at, if I recall correctly about 0.035% per day earned.
But you are right about some outrageous amounts of some retirement packages, that’s usually city workers,county workers, and school superintendent packages.
Not your average school district employee.
Mine is about 42,000 a year after 38 years.
I was smart enough way back when to open several alternate retirement accounts and other investments and put every raise I ever got into them, had to live kind of close to the bone back then but it is paying off now.
I have still never owned a new car or truck.
A significant part of the problem is that many of these states over estimated the annual returns on investment in their pension funds. This allowed them to reduce their contributions and use the difference to fund social schemes like the railway to nowhere in California. Those responsible have or will retire with fat pensions and don’t care when it falls apart.