I am hearing that the City of Santa Ana budget has been cut to the bone, but this summer’s retroactive pension formula bump to 2.7-at-55 is greatly exacerbating their financial woes. This explains why they have implemented a hiring freeze.
So why did they spike their public employees’ pensions?
The short answer is that Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido was facing two challengers this year. So he gave the police and firemen everything they wanted so that they would continue to finance “Team Pulido.” Well, I hope they are all happy now that the city’s budget deficit is spiraling out of control.
I am also hearing that the City of Santa Ana will soon start firing employees. The pension spike is now resulting in understaffing that is only going to get worse. I hope the union hacks in my city are happy.
When will the City Council finally man up and fire inept City Manager Dave Ream? This pension spike happened on his watch. Someone needs to be held accountable…
Pension entitlements have been a sleeping monster for some time.
The state counties and cities all put them into place with legal votes and negotiations.
Just vote to take a five year hiatus from contributions, the funds have plenty of cash to meet their needs, right? And if that can’t be vote to happen, then cancel the plans outright, buy annuities for the current retires and move the balance in to the Social Security System.
Funding of these retirement systems has always been a percentage of the then current pay (wages) and the final payouts are based on inflated final year salaries. Recalculated all those pensions based the same way SS payments are based.