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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (84437)	5/25/2010 12:43:24 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224705

When a public pension is a trust fund By: Mark Hemingway Commentary Staff Writer May 24, 2010 Last year, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in economics, primarily for her insights about economic behavior. Here's one: "Shaming and honoring are very important. We don't have as much of an understanding of that," she said in an interview last year. "That's not been part of our accepted way of thinking." Indeed, reading a New York Times cover story on public pensions last week, I began to wonder if it wasn't time to bring back shame in a big way. That may be the only way to get the public pension problem under control. The Times reported "13 New York City police officers recently retired at age 40 with pensions above $100,000 a year; nine did so in their 30s." When you retire in your 30s with an inflation-adjusted, taxpayer-funded, six-figure annual income for life -- that's not a pension. It's a trust fund. As a mitigating factor, the Times did note that many of these were special disability pensions. Police work is dangerous, but so is military service, and few if any disabled veterans receive benefits anywhere near this generous. And what about the other 3,704 retired New York public sector employees collecting six-figure pensions? According to the Congressional Research Service, the mean income for private sector retirees is $31,757. The CRS figure doesn't count the value of health care, which most retired public employees get for free or at minimal expense to them. The CRS figure does include the average Social Security payout, which almost all public sector employees get on top of their generous pensions. What did these public employees do to justify such egregiously generous benefits? Most likely, nothing. That's just the way the system works. The Times asked retired police officer Hugo Tassone, of Yonkers, to justify padding his salary with overtime to increase his retirement income. He retired at 44 and has a $101,333 annual pension. "I don't understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem," Tassone told the Times. Tassone did nothing illegal. Lawmakers should be held accountable for negotiating such sweet deals with public employees unions. Such bargains almost always involve some sort of quid pro quo to help get them elected. However, retiring young and expecting taxpayers to foot your generous income for 40 years or more is not OK. Just because something is legal does not mean Tassone is honorable for taking advantage of the system. Which is why the Times posted on its Web site all the salaries of New York workers with pensions of over $100,000. A quick look at the list reveals plenty of targets for indignant taxpayers. The largest public pension in the state goes to a former K-12 public school administrator, James Hunderfund, who earns $316,245 a year. How is that possible? There are signs that the movement to shame public employees may catch on. The Web site californiapensionreform.com provides a searchable database of all 12,201 public employees in that state earning six-figure pensions. In case you were wondering, Bruce Malkenhorst, former city administrator from Vernon, Calif., earns a pension of $509,664 a year. Yes, you read that right. Every state and the federal government should have such a database. Taxpayers are on the hook for $3 trillion in underfunded public pension plans across the country. Political firestorms erupt whenever somebody tries to get a handle on these retirement rip-offs. Even so, taxpayers have a right to know who is responsible and to shame them for doing it. washingtonexaminer.com