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The vendor helps CalPERS identify member deaths and make sure that correct payments go to retirees and their beneficiaries.. The personal information of about 769,000 retired CalPERS members was exposed in a third-party data breach that was reported earlier this month. CalSTRS also said it was impacted by the breach and KCRA 3 is trying to learn how many of its members were impacted. CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, is the nation's largest public pension fund. It serves more than 2 million members in its retirement system and more than 1.5 million in its health program. CalSTRS, the...

The market crash and the economic fallout from the coronavirus have led to nearly $1 trillion in investment losses for U.S. public pension funds, Moody's Investors Service said. The credit rating agency said the funds are generally facing an average investment loss of about 21% in the fiscal year that ends June 30, based on a March 20 snapshot of market indexes. The severity of the spreading COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and government-ordered shutdowns in various U.S. states have weighed heavily on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average erasing over three years of gains in...

In a reminder of the extent and reality of California’s pension problem, the state’s six-figure pension club has more doubled since 2012. ... the number of retirees from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System who received pensions worth $100,000 or more rose from 14,760 in 2012 to 30,969 in 2018. average pension for full-career state employees enrolled in the plan for non-public safety workers was $63,057. For full-career state retirees enrolled in the plan for safety members, the average pension in 2018 was $84,197. For those working for local government employers, the average pension for regular employees was $74,599 in...

California pension worries most often focus on CalPERS and CalSTRS, the state’s two multi-employer behemoths. But the state has many other underfunded plans, and these city and county systems pose significant challenges for governments that contribute to them. The City of Los Angeles faces the largest municipal pension funding gap, measured in absolute dollar terms. According to the city’s 2016 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, Los Angeles’ Net Pension Liability totaled $8.2 billion. Curiously, this number does not appear on the city’s government-wide balance sheet (called a Statement of Net Position). Instead, the $8.2 billion is reported as part of LA’s...

Following pressure from a major investor, U.S. private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management is selling gunmaker Freedom Group, whose Bushmaster AR-15 rifle was used in the Connecticut school massacre last week. The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) said on Monday it was reviewing its investment with Cerberus in the wake of Friday's shooting, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and then took his own life. Before going to the school, the gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, shot dead his mother in the home they shared, according to law enforcement officials. In...

The chief executives of CalPERS and CalSTRS along with Controller John Chiang and Treasurer Bill Lockyer are asking the Brown administration to overhaul the state's travel meal reimbursement rates to help accommodate for trips to expensive locales. Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2011/08/california-officials-seek-higher-rates-meal-reimbursements.html#ixzz1U6X38OST

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insists he won't sign a new state budget unless the Legislature rolls back a hefty increase in state employee pensions enacted 11 years ago. It's the latest wrinkle in Schwarzenegger's years-long war with the California Public Employees' Retirement System and state worker unions over what he contends is an unsustainable and "inexcusable" pension system that's killing the state budget. CalPERS and the unions respond, in effect, that the system is sound, despite multibillion-dollar investment losses, and that once the economy recovers, the nation's largest pension fund will resume hefty earnings to cover its obligations. As the argument...

California is the nation's shameful example of what happens when Democrats influenced by big-government labor rule the statehouse for forty years. With 12.5% unemployment (up from 4.5% a mere three years ago) and a "recognized" budget deficit of $21 billion, California has just found that out it is in much, much more financial trouble than anyone, especially a Democrat, really wants to admit. California's governor Schwarzenegger commissioned a study by Stanford University, which has found that California's three public employee pension funds (The California Public Employees' Retirement System [CalPERS], California State Teachers' Retirement System [CalSTRS], and University of California...

CalPERS plans to extend a management contract with financial services giant State Street Corp., the same firm accused in a lawsuit of defrauding CalPERS and CalSTRS. The one-year extension, announced Tuesday at a meeting of CalPERS' investment committee, brought concern from state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a fund board member. "My question is whether we ought to be extending business relationships with firms that may have defrauded the state of California," he said in an interview. But the California Public Employees' Retirement System staff said the bidding process on a new contract is so lengthy, the one-year extension became a necessity....

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill on Sunday, as he previously said he would, to bar the two biggest U.S. public pension funds from investing in companies doing business in Iran. The bill, which affects the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran. Schwarzenegger's office had issued an announcement last month stating he would sign the bill while he was in New York as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was appearing at Columbia University. "I couldn't be more proud to sign this bill," Schwarzenegger echoed...

Even as it tackled a long-term $20 billion gap in funding for the state's school employees, the California State Teachers' Retirement Board found time at its meeting last week to plug another hole: the millions of dollars that firms which handle, or want to handle, pension fund investments have donated to board trustees who are also elected officers. The state treasurer, the controller and the superintendent of public instruction, each of whom by virtue of the office sits as a CalSTRS trustee, all run for election or re-election statewide. That takes money. If they decide to run for higher statewide...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday tapped an Oakland high school teacher and government ethics advocate for the state teachers' retirement board. Peter Reinke, a third-generation teacher, will join the 12-member board of the influential California State Teachers' Retirement System, filling the post vacated by controversial Schwarzenegger adviser David Crane. Under fire by teachers' groups and labor unions, Crane was ousted last June by Senate Democrats who said the governor's special adviser for jobs and economic growth was not the right fit for the post at the $142 billion fund. Crane came under criticism for his refusal to oppose a legislative...

For years, Sacramento wags have joked about “state Sen. Rudy Bermudez, D-California Correctional Peace Officers Association,” because the only thing the Norwalk lawmaker seems to care about is propping up the pay and benefits of prison guards. Given what happened this week in the Legislature, it is now just as proper to think of Sens. Don Perata, Debra Bowen and Gil Cedillo as being “D-California Teachers Association” – because their primary allegiance obviously isn't to Californians in general. This week Perata, Bowen and Cedillo killed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's nomination of David Crane, a highly regarded San Francisco financier, to the...

Democratic lawmakers have denied David Crane, one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's friends and economic advisers, a seat on the California State Teachers' Retirement System board. The Senate Rules Committee voted 3-2 along party lines Wednesday to reject the Republican governor's appointment of Crane to the board. Democrats said they were concerned he would not protect teachers' pensions. Schwarzenegger last year was forced to withdraw an attempt to alter public employee pensions after police and firefighters launched an ad campaign against it. The governor wanted to shift retirement plans for teachers and other public employees to a defined-contribution system - one...

Fearing they could set an unwelcome precedent, trustees of the California State Teachers' Retirement System on Thursday rejected a call to shed holdings in PetroChina Co. The decision deals a setback to CalSTRS trustee and state Treasurer Phil Angelides, who pushed for divestment, arguing the fund faced "unwarranted risk" because of the government-controlled Chinese oil company's business ties in strife-torn Sudan and environmental disaster in northeastern China. CalSTRS, the nation's second largest public pension fund with $137.1 billion in assets, owns 19.9 million shares of PetroChina, worth about $15.5 million. Trustees also signaled little immediate interest in divesting investments in...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The state pension fund for teachers should sell its $24 million investment in PetroChina Co. following a massive chemical spill at one of the company's plants in northeastern China, state Treasurer Phil Angelides said Friday. Angelides said the firm was slow to respond to the Nov. 13 disaster, which contaminated the drinking water supply for nearly 4 million people. He said the company also has ties to the Sudanese government, which has been accused of human rights violations. "It is clear that PetroChina's activities demonstrate significant environmental risks, human rights violations and ethical liabilities that present too...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A Sacramento County judge sided with the teachers' retirement system Wednesday in its battle with the state over a $500 million pension fund contribution. Superior Court Judge Judy Holzer Hersher ruled that former Gov. Gray Davis and legislators broke a "clear and unambiguous" requirement when they withheld the payment as part of efforts to balance the state's 2003-04 budget. The money was supposed to be used for supplemental payments to 63,000 retired educators or their survivors to restore pension purchasing power eroded by inflation. Carolyn Widener, chairwoman of the California State Teachers' Retirement System's board, said the...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Two months after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fired four of his nominees to the California State Teachers Retirement System board for opposing his privatization plan for public employee pensions, the Senate retaliated Wednesday by refusing to confirm a Schwarzenegger appointee who supports the idea. The Senate Rules Committee refused to confirm Kathleen Smalley, a real estate finance specialist from Los Angeles, to oversee the $125 billion retirement system, making her the newest casualty of a fiercely partisan struggle over the future of California's $300 billion pension systems. "Ms. Smalley's 'no' vote on the motion to oppose the pension...

California's largest public pension plans want investors to think green - as in money and the environment. And they want deep-pocket investors to think beyond feel-good investments such as power-generating solar and wind farms - to wireless sensors to monitor power usage in supermarkets, or to home water-treatment systems. Investors can make money by mining opportunities in emerging clean technology ventures, say officials at the influential California Public Employees' Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System. Or, they say, they can eventually lose money by ignoring the future financial risks of greenhouse gas emissions. "We're trying to look at...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - One day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced plans to push his pension overhaul campaign to the ballot later this year, an Assembly hearing into the proposed changes quickly showed more hostility among lawmakers than support. The Democrat-dominated Committee on the Public Sector heard testimony from a Republican lawmaker and key Schwarzenegger official on privatizing the state's pension systems, but openly feuded with them, revealing the growing partisan divide over the issue. "Are we wasting our time here when the governor has already flipped us the bird publicly?" asked Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, during testimony by state...