Sunday News
The Miami Herald did a front page story on how much money public sector employees make in retirement and how it is bankrupting local governments.
This as most reporting about government will be cited to justify distrust and to vilify public employees.
And they talk about class warfare. There are abuses in public pension plans and they take place because elected officials don't do their jobs. This is as much a story about shoddy accounting, political corruption and self dealing as anything else.
The City of Miami is financially in trouble because its police and fireman can retire making more money in retirement than they ever did while working. AND highly paid supervisors are able to job the system to inflate their pensions by doing some unseemly things in the period just before retirement to maximize the payout. Assigning themselves overtime and other payouts can inflate compensation levels that dramitically affect pensions.
Should supervisors be able assign them selves overtime, should payouts for unused sick leave and vacations be part of salary figures used to determine pensions and are there ages before which persons should be ineligible for retirements or conversely should peole be required to retire when their future payments reach a certain level.
The other responsible parties are the elcted officials who usually provide themselves pensions similar to police and firefighters without fighting fires or chasing bad guys. This is also done because public employees vote in relatively large numbers than the public in general and they do each other favors by supporting each other on this issue. How many people in the private sector get paid time off to vote?
Not all public pension systems are the same, not every pension system is causing governmental bankruptcy and many employees are not getting outrageous pensions. I think the system needs to be looked at. I think Social Security and Medicare need to be looked at also. The usual areguement that this is something that was worked for and bargained for needs to be addressed in lieu of how long we live and individual circumstances.
This does not need to be a sinecure. It needs attention and should be adjusted, not destroyed.
This as most reporting about government will be cited to justify distrust and to vilify public employees.
And they talk about class warfare. There are abuses in public pension plans and they take place because elected officials don't do their jobs. This is as much a story about shoddy accounting, political corruption and self dealing as anything else.
The City of Miami is financially in trouble because its police and fireman can retire making more money in retirement than they ever did while working. AND highly paid supervisors are able to job the system to inflate their pensions by doing some unseemly things in the period just before retirement to maximize the payout. Assigning themselves overtime and other payouts can inflate compensation levels that dramitically affect pensions.
Should supervisors be able assign them selves overtime, should payouts for unused sick leave and vacations be part of salary figures used to determine pensions and are there ages before which persons should be ineligible for retirements or conversely should peole be required to retire when their future payments reach a certain level.
The other responsible parties are the elcted officials who usually provide themselves pensions similar to police and firefighters without fighting fires or chasing bad guys. This is also done because public employees vote in relatively large numbers than the public in general and they do each other favors by supporting each other on this issue. How many people in the private sector get paid time off to vote?
Not all public pension systems are the same, not every pension system is causing governmental bankruptcy and many employees are not getting outrageous pensions. I think the system needs to be looked at. I think Social Security and Medicare need to be looked at also. The usual areguement that this is something that was worked for and bargained for needs to be addressed in lieu of how long we live and individual circumstances.
This does not need to be a sinecure. It needs attention and should be adjusted, not destroyed.
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