No one doubts that California firefighters and police officers perform their duties well and deserve our gratitude for their crucial public service.
And before that gratitude, they deserve, as do we all, fair compensation for their work.
Especially in the case of firefighters, the pay and pensions they receive are certainly more than fair. The fact that there’s far more demand than supply for firefighting jobs shows that many Californians would love to sign up for those careers.
But, especially in a moment of huge budget deficits and a need to cut back on, not increase, state spending, what we can’t do is promise public safety workers big new pension increases that could practically bankrupt California.
And yet that’s what some legislators are proposing in a new bill. CalMatters describes it: “They proposed legislation this spring that would allow newly hired police and firefighters to retire two years earlier — at age 55 — and with a more generous pension formula, arguing that the nature of their work exposes them to hazards and takes a toll on their health.”
Assembly Bill 1383 by Democratic Assemblymember Tina McKinnor of Inglewood “also would lift a cap on how much California pensioners can earn in retirement, increasing it by almost $100,000 to match the federal limit of $280,000 a year. That change alone would cost government agencies and workers more than $300 million a year in new payroll expenses, according to a legislative analysis of the plan.”
A key voice against such a foolhardy fiscal move is former Gov. Jerry Brown, who in 2012 championed a law that has employees hired after Jan. 1, 2013 accrue pension benefits under a less generous formula and have to work longer to earn a full retirement.
He says the new bill would hurt the state deeply in any new financial downturn. “It’s a big complicated system, and what’s being proposed here is to make it less secure. As a member of the pension system, I object to that,” he said in an interview with CalMatters.
The CALPERS and state teachers pension systems are underfunded by tens of billions of dollars. Republican Assemblymembers Juan Alanis and Tom Lackey, former law enforcement officers on a key committee that approved the bill, also supported the lower retirement age. They’re wrong to. We can’t afford it.
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