Don Mette, the recently retired Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District chief collects $20,083 a month in retirement, $240,999 a year. Mette just made the infamous top 10 list of public employee pensioners in California. Compiled by the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, pension reform activists, Mette is No. 8 on the list. <\/p>\n
The public knows the size of Mette’s pension because Sac Metro Fire contracts with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. To its credit, CalPERS voluntarily discloses such information. <\/p>\n
By troubling contrast, Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System refuses to disclose the names of its retirees and their pension earnings. Unlike CalPERS, the county retirement system is governed by the 1937 Retirement Act. County officials claim state law bars them from disclosing confidential information. But other 37 Act counties – including Fresno, Contra Costa and Stanislaus – have released it. Sacramento should too.<\/p>\n
It’s not idle curiosity that motivates newspapers to seek such information. Soaring pension costs have put additional pressure on Sacramento County’s dangerously depleted finances. High pension obligations are part of the reason the county has been forced to reduce services and lay off hundreds of its employees. <\/p>\n
After prodding by The Bee, SCERS released some information but not the most important – the identity of the biggest pensioners and the size of their pensions. <\/p>\n
Still, as The Bee’s Robert Lewis reported in Public Eye on Thursday, what has been released is troubling enough: 245 former Sac County employees collect more than $100,000 in pensions. Some 125 of those $100,000-plus pensioners worked for the Sheriff’s Department, and 80 percent retired after 2003, when county supervisors substantially boosted retirement benefits. <\/p>\n
In a visit to The Bee last year, CalPERS’ Rob Feckner surprised us by saying the $100,000 club “is something that needs to be looked at.” He’s right. State and local governments must reduce pension benefits for new hires to a reasonable level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don Mette, the recently retired Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District chief collects $20,083 a month in retirement, $240,999 a year. Mette just made the infamous top 10 list of public employee pensioners in California. Compiled by the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, pension reform activists, Mette is No. 8 on the list. The public knows the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}