California AG sues former CalPERS director and placement agent

Calif. AG sues former pension fund officials for fraud, alleging kickbacks to win investments

LA Times May 6, 2010

State authorities sued former top California pension fund officials Federico Buenrostro Jr. and Alfred R. Villalobos on Wednesday for their role in an alleged scheme to get business for investment firms by giving pension officials luxury trips and other gifts.

The civil suit alleges that Buenrostro — chief executive of the powerful California Public Employees' Retirement System from 2002 to 2008 — took tens of thousands of dollars' worth of gifts from Villalobos, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor who now works as a go-between for investment firms.

Villalobos and his company, Arvco Capital Research, obtained more than $47 million in "undisclosed and unlawful commissions for selling approximately $4.8 billion worth of securities to CalPERS" from 2005 to 2009, according to the suit, filed by the state attorney general's office in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

"Buenrostro … played a key role in assisting Villalobos and Arvco in their fraudulent activities," the suit alleges. As part of the lawsuit, the state won a court order Wednesday freezing Villalobos' bank accounts and other assets.

The suit claims that Villalobos compromised Buenrostro and other CalPERS officials with gifts, which ultimately "compromised the integrity of CalPERS' investment process" and violated the state corporations code.

The gifts included round-the-world trips as well as private jet flights for fund executives to attend a New York fundraiser honoring Leon Black, founder of investment firm Apollo Global Management, the lawsuit said. Apollo is Villalobos' biggest client at CalPERS.

Neither Buenrostro nor Villalobos could immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. Executives at CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund, declined to comment.

A day after leaving the top job at CalPERS, Buenrostro became a business associate of Villalobos', the suit alleged. It also alleges that Buenrostro discussed employment opportunities with Villalobos, a friend of more than 20 years, while still serving at CalPERS. Villalobos made a standing but undisclosed offer to Buenrostro that included a free Lake Tahoe condominium, the lawsuit said. It said Villalobos signed the title to one of his properties over to Buenrostro in December 2009. Buenrostro started working with Arvco a day after he retired from CalPERS in mid-2008.

The state's suit also discussed actions of two other CalPERS officials, Charles Valdes and Leon Shahanian, who were not named as defendants.

Valdes, a retired Caltrans attorney who left the CalPERS board in January, received $22,400 in campaign contributions in 2005 from a company controlled by Villalobos and from three of Villalobos' employees.

Villalobos directed the employees to give the money and later reimbursed them, the complaint alleged. Valdes also accompanied Villalobos and Buenrostro on a 10-day trip to Dubai and other world capitals that was valued at more than $20,000.

Shahanian, a senior CalPERS investment officer overseeing a $44-billion private equity portfolio, was one employee who flew on a private jet in 2007 to New York and stayed at a luxury hotel to attend the $2,000 fundraising event at the Museum of Modern Art honoring Black. Also attending were New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Caroline Kennedy and director Martin Scorsese.

The lawsuit described the gift as an attempt to influence Shahanian. Shahanian was placed on leave from CalPERS after the suit was filed and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Black's Apollo, which is not accused of any wrongdoing in the lawsuit, later reimbursed Villalobos $63,000 for the New York trip.

The next morning, Villalobos had Shahanian driven in a limousine to the airport for a flight to Boca Raton, Fla., to attend an annual meeting of another private equity firm, BlackRock Inc.

Most of Shahanian's expenses were paid by Villalobos. After Shahanian returned to his home in the Sacramento suburbs, he received three bottles of champagne, including one worth $200, from Villalobos, the suit alleged.

A month later, on June 18, 2007, Shahanian recommended in a closed session that the CalPERS board approve a proposed $700 million investment in Apollo.

"Shahanian did not disclose to the CalPERS board that he had just returned from an all-expenses-paid trip with Villalobos to New York to attend the MoMA event," the lawsuit said.

In its request to freeze Villalobos' assets, the attorney general's office alleged that after its investigation "became visible to Villalobos, he engaged in a number of suspicious real estate transfers and continued to engage in frequent, high-stakes gambling."

The state also alleged that Villalobos has a history of suffering large gambling losses.

In approving the freeze, Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg appointed a receiver to oversee Villalobos' extensive real estate holdings and numerous bank accounts.

The attorney general's office began investigating placement-agent activity last fall after CalPERS, the country's largest public pension fund, disclosed that some of its wealthiest investment partners had paid huge fees to Villalobos.

The complaint seeks civil penalties, disgorgement of profits and restitution to state pension fund investors of $95 million from Villalobos and Buenrostro.

Press Release: CalPERS expresses support for AG investigation

CalPERS Praises Attorney General’s Office for Filing Fraud Action and Obtaining Asset Receivership Order Against Placement Agent

SACRAMENTO, CA – Stating their strong support for the Attorney General’s decision to file civil fraud claims and obtain an asset receivership order against placement agent Alfred R. Villalobos, CalPERS officials today provided the following comments:

“I want to thank the Attorney General and his office for taking the steps they have to protect our members and the pension system. We are all working hard to address these issues. Manipulation of this 78-year old institution cannot, and will not, be tolerated. We will continue to work side-by-side with authorities in the pursuit of justice,” said CalPERS Board President Rob Feckner.

Anne Stausboll, CalPERS Chief Executive Officer, said “we are deeply troubled by the apparent fraud committed against CalPERS. My number one priority has been, and will continue to be, ensuring that the system and our members are protected against fraud and abuse. CalPERS has placed the internal investment officer mentioned in the Attorney General’s complaint on administrative leave. We are heartened to have the Attorney General’s Office working with us and our special review team to right the wrongs that may have occurred. These matters underscore the importance of passing placement agent reform this year. We urge the Legislature and the Governor to pass our bill so that no one will ever be able to profit inappropriately in the way the Attorney General set forth in his court papers.”

Philip Khinda, the Steptoe & Johnson partner leading the special review for CalPERS, also praised the Attorney General’s Office pursuit of the case: “It has been a privilege working as closely with the Attorney General’s Office as we have, and helping protect the beneficiaries of the pension fund.”

Since last summer, CalPERS has taken aggressive steps to implement policies and reforms that strengthen the pension fund’s accountability and ethics, and to ensure full transparency. View “A Track Record of Reforms and Actions.” (http://www.calpersresponds.com/issues.php/calpers-toughens-ethics-accountability)

CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund with assets totaling approximately $210 billion. The System provides retirement benefits to 1.6 million State, school and local public agency employees and their families. For more information, visit www.calpers.ca.gov.

Conflict-of-interest charges against former San Diego City pension board members are dismissed

DA Dismisses Charges Against Former Pension Board Members

May 5, 2010 www.kpbs.org

SAN DIEGO — District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis today dismissed conflict-of-interest charges against six former San Diego pension board members.

Onetime San Diego City Employees' Retirement System board members Cathy Lexin, Mary Vattimo, Teresa Webster, Sharon Wilkinson, John Torres and Ronald Saathoff were charged by the District Attorney's Office in 2005 with violating government code 1090, which prohibits public officials from negotiating a contract in which they have a financial interest.

The California Supreme Court tossed out most of the case in January. The DA filed a request for a re-hearing but that was denied. Deputy District Attorney Steve Robinson says the office will abide by the court’s ruling even though the office doesn’t agree with it. "It was our position it was wrong for a pension board trustee to agree to an illegal underfunding in return for the promise of increased retirement benefits for all of the active employees including themselves," he said.

In a statement, DA Dumanis said her office continues to believe in their position. "However, after years of litigation in the appellate courts, and eight years after the alleged conduct, it is time for this case to conclude," she said.

Criminal law specialist Michael Crowley says the state Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the case was correct. He says a lot of people serve on boards related to things in which they have an interest. Crowley says the DA’s office was wrong to prosecute the pension board members.

"Maybe they should have acted differently; maybe there should have been criticism, maybe there should have been some political action taken," he said. "But to use the criminal justice system, to me, is something that should never have been done."

Crowley says boards are designed to weigh the options and make a decision.

The state Supreme Court dismissed felony conflict-of-interest charges against five of the former pension board members, but ruled that the trial of Saathoff, the former firefighters union president, could proceed.

In the statement, the District Attorney's Office said the Supreme Court's ruling stopped it from proceeding with its case against five defendants and substantially undermined the case against Saathoff.

The charges stemmed from a decision in 2002 that permitted the city to contribute less into the pension system, while at the same time increasing retirement benefits.

The District Attorney's Office argued that the agreement violated the state's conflict-of-interest law because those who approved the deal stood to gain from it.

Not so cushy: CNN/Money coverage of NIRS/CSLGE pay study

Government jobs not so cushy

April 28, 2010

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- State and local workers earn less than their private sector counterparts and the pay gap is widening, according to a report released Wednesday.

Public workers earn 11% to 12% less than workers in private companies, according to a joint study from the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and National Institute on Retirement Security.

The report, which analyzed 20 years of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also found that the pay gap has generally widened over the last two decades, as private compensation moved higher while earnings for state and local workers fell. "The big divergence began to occur in the late 1990s," said John S. Heywood, a professor in the economics department at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and co-author of the report. "It's an issue."

Researchers say the make-up of public workers could be a primary driver for the gap. According to the study, because state and local employees tend to be older, they're less likely to leave their positions, which could keep salaries stagnant. "The kinds of employment relationships in the public sector tend to be long term," said Keith A. Bender, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and co-author of the report. "People in the private sector are more likely to turn over, looking for the highest return."

Still, while public sector workers are better educated -- 48% have college degrees versus 23% in the private sector -- the hard cash hasn't followed. Public employees, instead, see more in the way of benefits.

According to the study, benefits such as healthcare and retirement programs, comprise 32.7% of total compensation for public sector workers, compared to 29.2% in the total private sector. Larger private companies tend to be more in line with the public sector.

Even when accounting for these benefits, though, total compensation is still 6.8% to 7.4% lower on average for state and local employees. "For a long time, there has been a compensation trade-off in public sector jobs --better benefits come with lower pay as compared with private sector jobs", said Beth Almeida, executive director of NIRS. "This study tells us that is still true today."

As the jobs market slowly improves, a brain drain to the private sector, potentially out of state, coupled with the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill, which includes tax incentives for businesses that hire, could make it harder for public sector employers to attract top talent.

The Center for State and Local Government Excellence's president, Elizabeth Kellar, said that there is a "looming workforce crisis" in the public sector, as a wave of retirement and low pay collide, leaving holes in many highly skilled slots.

"Hiring managers told us that, despite the economy, they find it difficult to fill vacancies for highly skilled [public sector] positions such as engineering, environmental science, information technology and health care professionals," said Kellar. "The compensation gap may have something to do with this."

Girard Miller on NIRS pay study

Out of Balance, or Out of Proportion?

A new look at whether public employees are overpaid.

Governing May 6, 2010

A recent study sheds new light on the nagging question of whether public employees are paid too much relative to their counterparts in the private sector. The study, which is making the rounds in public management circles, was sponsored by the National Institute for Retirement Security, a public-pension advocacy group, and by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, which obviously sees virtue in the public sector. Both organizations are unabashed in their commitments to public service. As long as everybody checks out the funding sources, we can take their duly selective research reports with an appropriate grain of salt.

If you ask the typical business economist, such as Gary Shilling (whose recent Wall Street Journal editorial addressed this same issue with a jaundiced eye), you generally will hear that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show public employees getting paid much higher than private employees. When you then add the richer benefits packages that public employees typically receive, the traditional conclusion of the less-government crowd has been that public employees have too sweet a deal.

So along came two professors, Ken Bender and John Haywood of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a different and clever new cut of the data. They broke down the BLS data by occupation and then stratified it by educational level. When viewed that way, they found that public employees are often better educated than their private-sector counterparts in similar occupations. For example, most police officers today are better educated than private security guards and night watchmen. So when educational factors and other potentially relevant correlates like work experience are controlled, they found that public employees are not paid more than non-governmental workers, even when richer benefits are added to the mix.

Their research aligns with the everyday experience of most of us who work in and around the public sector, where the folklore is that many but not all governmental jobs do indeed pay lower salaries than private employers. In professions such as public health, engineering, law, finance and management, few would dispute that public-sector pay is lower. Emergency room doctors at the county general hospital usually make less than private practitioners (unless they are TV stars). Teachers have traditionally received lower salaries than many other college graduates mdash; along with longer vacations, summers off and better benefits. And the idea that benefits are richer for most public employees is no surprise to anybody either. Nor is the observation that tenured public employees are paid more than younger workers. So, a study that controls for "work experience" will tilt results favorably for unionized and seniority-based government-employee pay plans.

After all, we would expect a teacher with a master's degree and a police officer with a criminal justice degree to be paid more than a gardener, a dog groomer or the kids flipping burgers at Mickey D's. Of course, the ratio of burger-flippers and domestic workers seems to grow faster in the private sector than similar unskilled employment in the public sector as the economy sheds skilled manufacturing jobs and employs more lower-skilled service workers. That structural shift in the mainstream economy is not addressed by this report. Nor is the last decade's impact of technology (think Microsoft Office and the mechanization of public works) in the public sector's low-skill sectors relative to the private services economy.

The report goes on to claim that public employee compensation with all these factors held constant has not grown faster than private employees in the past decade or more. This will be harder for many objective readers to swallow as a genuine fact and not the result of statistical maneuvering. Maybe it was all those realtors, homebuilders and investment managers who skewed the 2008 data for private compensation. Or perhaps the statistical result reflects a doubling of the percentage of public employees with college degrees during the study period, which would skew results when used as a control factor.

Flaws aside, I want to applaud the efforts of the sponsors and the researchers for a valiant first effort. They have shed some needed light on an important topic. Whatever one's biases, for or against prevailing public-sector compensation levels, this kind of analysis is instructive. In the search for the truth, we're actually getting somewhere here.

The report fails to make an airtight case, however. To drill deeper, I fired off a half-dozen questions to the researchers, who were prompt and plausible in their responses -- which heightens their credibility overall. First, I discovered upon inquiry that approximately one-half of the college-educated public workers were educators. Thus, this study is skewed by the compensation practices in the school systems, and it comes as no surprise that teachers have been paid less than other college graduates in the private economy for a host of reasons. It would have been nice to see if the same conclusions would result for the remaining governmental employees. Otherwise, we may infer conclusions about teachers that don't apply to public safety and public works employees, office clerks and mid-level bureaucrats.

Second, they massaged the BLS data to derive hourly pay rates, using assumptions rather than facts on overtime and actual workweek levels. Now, it may very well turn out that there's no statistical difference if you were to compare actual W-2 income, but common sense and 30 years of experience around the public sector tells me that many highly unionized public employees (by a ratio of 4-to-1 over private workers) are probably collecting more overtime pay with their college degrees than nonunion degreed professionals who are treated as exempt elsewhere.

Just take the case of those police officers with their criminal justice degrees. They rack up big-time OT with their criminal justice degrees. And most local-government managers privately complain about firefighters, who clearly get paid more than anybody you'll meet with comparable education levels -- and receive big pay premiums for seniority and specializations (treated here as "work experience"). At the lower skill levels, however, I would agree with the researchers that overtime would likely be more prevalent in the private sector, so it's a mixed bag depending on one's focus. Their reply to me was that statistically, overtime is a relatively minor element of overall compensation, so perhaps it machts nichts (doesn't matter) in the grander scheme of things.

Third, the researchers conclude that public employee benefits are only marginally higher than private counterparts, whereas economist Gary Shilling cites BLS data showing public sector health benefits costs to be double those in the private sector. This report instead jump-shifts from its primary methodology for wages to other statistics to draw global inferences regarding benefits as a percent of total compensation, and abandoned the researchers' sharper analytic tools when it came to benefits. I will leave it to the research community to determine if there is a more consistent way to evaluate the available data.

Fourth, in an important omission, the study ignores the unfunded but real, imminent cost of public employee retirement benefits such as retiree medical benefits because these data are not reported to the statistical bureaus. Thus, they overlook a highly valuable retiree medical benefit because it's unfunded. The same is true for unfunded pension costs that have now doubled because of 2000-2008 investment underperformance and a 20-year trend toward earlier retirement ages in some states (despite increases in life expectancy). So the taxpayers are on the hook for much higher benefits costs than the researcher's models have acknowledged. Those deferred bills will come due, but they are ignored in this study. The private sector provides little-to-no retiree medical benefits, and has largely shifted from defined benefit pension plans to 401k plans that avoid unfunded liabilities. Given today's $2 trillion of non-amortizing retirement plan deficits in our sector, my estimate is that their error of omission here is in the order of magnitude of 5 to 10 percent of public-sector base pay on average nationwide, judging anecdotally from the dozens of recent actuarial reports I encounter in my day job.

Whether this is significant enough to make a fuss about it is up to the reader. I just want to point out some weaknesses in the methodology that would be nice to see remedied in future research along these lines. Certainly the data here would not be sufficient to justify or rationalize earlier governmental retirement ages that haven't been paid for and aren't reflected in the reported costs.

I asked the researchers about the unionization factor, and they informed me that it was used as a control factor in the regression analysis. If public employees are unionized by a 4-to-1 ratio vs. the private sector, then my instinct tells me there is a material impact here that gets lost in translation. If there is a different correlation between unionization and college degrees (taking teachers and police officers again as prominent examples) between the two sectors, then we need to think more deeply than this study has gone. From a public policy standpoint, unionization as a driver of compensation costs is hardly a neutral or benign variable.

The most troubling aspect of the report may be an underlying tone of elitism in the presentation of some pretty rigorous statistical work. The sponsors' press releases and executive summaries hinted of a self-righteousness from partisans who justify pay levels on the basis of their credentials. If the conclusion is that teachers receive lower pay relative to their education levels, I would have no quibble, but we need to be careful about inferences in other sectors of government. Meritocracy-by-diploma has its place, but it has the downside of an entitlement mentality.

This is not to suggest that we want dumber public servants, or to challenge the value of trained public employees and administrators. The alternative of underqualified, ridiculously underpaid civil servants would be a huge step backward for American society. I personally have invested six-figures' worth of my own money to sponsor a scholarship program so that worthy graduate students in public finance can afford to get their degrees to work in government for inferior pay without taking on huge student loans -- my payback for an opportunity I was given in 1972 that I have never forgotten. I just don't want to see a study like this used to advance a new-age Plato-Republican entitlement concept of Philosopher-Kings who somehow justify cushy paychecks and six-figure pensions simply on the basis of their masters' degrees. That kind of elitism will quickly backfire on the entire public sector in the form of citizen backlash as witnessed in a recent "Saturday Night Live" sketch that degraded public employment. Humility will be very important during these tough times. Those who expect pay parity with the private sector -- and better benefits and earlier retirements -- are heading for a clash with voters.

Everybody seeking budget reductions or constructive change in the public sector through realignment of employee compensation and benefits should read this report carefully. Professors Bender and Haywood did some solid research here and dispelled a prevalent myth. They have shown quite clearly that the public-private pay gap is certainly not what it seems on the surface -- although we need to be careful not to over-generalize in the other direction now. But whatever its limitations, the study provides worthwhile insights and a foundation for a more intelligent dialogue. If it spawns another round of even better focused research, that could improve governmental decisionmaking -- as public-employee compensation and benefits policies are run through the wringer in the lean years still ahead.

Opinion: A strategy for reducing outsized public employee pay

How to Tackle Government Labor Costs

Pay freezes, two-tier wages, pension reform—nothing should be off the table.

A. Gary Shilling April 29, 2010 Wall Street Journal

Life is tough and getting tougher for state and local governments. Revenues from personal and corporate income and sales taxes are down and property taxes are weakening. Budget deficits are jumping, and states now issue debt to fund routine expenditures. Meanwhile, pension obligations are underfunded to the tune of $1 trillion, according to the Pew Center on the States. States on average have set aside just 7.1% of retiree health care and other nonpension benefits, and 20 states have reserved nothing.

Costs remain stubbornly high, propelled over the last decade by rising municipal employment. Since the Great Recession started in December 2007, private payrolls have dropped 7.4%, but state and local jobs are essentially unchanged, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Some governments are making service cuts, but these are wholly inadequate, and voters are fiercely resistant to tax increases. The inescapable conclusion: Labor costs, which at $1.1 trillion in 2008 account for half of state and local spending according to the Cato Institute, simply must come down. And there is plenty of reason why they should. Consider:

Years ago, there was an informal "social contract"—public employees generally received lower wages than private-sector workers, and in return they got earlier retirement and generous pensions, allowing them to catch up. That arrangement has long since gone by the boards. The result is a remarkable trend. State and local government employees for years have received pay increases in excess of inflation, and BLS figures show they now have wages that are 34% higher on average than in the private sector.

Partly responsible for these trends is unionization, which the Department of Labor reports has jumped to 37.4% of the public sector in 2009 from 24.1% in 1973 (unionization in the private sector declined to 7.2% from 25.4% in the same time period). The result is often pay levels higher than needed to attract qualified employees. The average quit rate among state and local employees is a third of that in the private sector.

Public employees also have a 70% advantage in benefits. Health insurance, retirement benefits, life insurance and paid sick leave are not only much more available to them, but much richer. In 2009, BLS figures indicate that the costs of health insurance were 2.18 times as much for state and local employees as for private-sector workers.

In the private sector, defined-benefit pensions have declined over the years in favor of defined-contribution plans such as the 401(k). In 2009, defined-benefit plans were available to only 21% of private-sector workers—but to 84% of municipal employees, according to the Cato Institute. And public-sector defined-benefit plans paid retirees about twice as much as those in the private sector.

Public-sector retirement costs also are high because many can retire at age 55 after 30 years of employment with pensions equal to 60% or more of final salary, which is often jacked up by lots of overtime in final working years. In some states, employees can "double dip" by retiring early and then resuming their previous jobs or taking other government positions. So they get salaries and pensions at the same time.

With slow economic growth, limited income expansion and high unemployment likely in future years, a taxpayer revolt may be brewing. Americans still want basic municipal services like police and fire protection, good schools for their kids, clean streets and garbage collection, but at lower costs and budgets that don't kick the deficit can down the road.

State and local government labor costs can be reduced in an orderly way. Following in the footsteps of bankrupt GM, two-tier wage structures would allow existing employees to continue at current salaries, but pay new hires much lower wages that are nevertheless adequate to attract and retain qualified people. And the new people can be enrolled in defined-contribution pension plans that require employee contributions instead of defined-benefit plans. Retirement ages can be increased.

While waiting for existing employees to retire, their pay can be frozen. Pension formulas can be reformed to avoid the system being gamed by heavy overtime in final years on the job, and double-dipping can be eliminated. Retirees in the public sector can be required, as they are in the private sector, to pay meaningful shares of their health-care costs.

These changes would be profound and shake up the high-paid, secure image of state and local government jobs. But essential services would still be delivered, only much more cost effectively. Push has come to shove.

Mr. Shilling, an economic consultant and investment adviser, is president of A. Gary Shilling & Co.

School teachers in Nevada county agree to wage freeze in lieu of layoffs

Teachers accept ‘shared sacrifice’

Union gives OK to freeze pay raises, a deal that defends against layoffs

Leila Navidi

Educators attend a union-negotiation update meeting last month at Del Sol High School. A tentative deal reached May 6 will help close the Clark County School District’s $28 million budget gap while preserving teacher jobs with no loss of benefits or pay.

May 7, 2010 Las Vegas Sun

The teachers union tentatively agreed Thursday to a one-year freeze on pay increases based on experience, a move that will help the Clark County School District close the remaining $28 million in its budget gap.

Freezing pay hikes normally given to teachers with every additional year of work is expected to save the district about $15 million. With teachers and other licensed personnel represented by the union — 18,000 in all — accounting for 67 percent of the district’s personnel costs, the tentative deal helps to clear a major hurdle to presenting a balanced budget for approval when the School Board meets May 19.

Ruben Murillo, president of the Clark County Education Association, said the proposed deal with the district would preserve teacher jobs with no loss of benefits or pay. Under the terms of the tentative agreement, teachers will continue to earn salary increases based on educational attainment, such as completing master’s degrees.

Murillo emphasized that the proposed agreement, which requires ratification by the union’s members, is a temporary fix. Solving the underlying problem of the state’s revenue shortfall, which required the district to cut $145 million from its 2011 operating budget, is another matter, Murillo said.

The district declined to comment Thursday on the deal. In a prior interview, Superintendent Walt Rulffes characterized ongoing discussions with the Clark County Education Association as “fruitful,” and said he thought an agreement could be reached that would avoid layoffs.

The district still plans to cut about 540 teaching positions in grades 1-3 as a result of class-size increases — also a money-saving move — but expects most of those individuals to be placed in alternative assignments.

The tentative one-year deal comes after seven negotiation sessions stretching back to February.

Several scenarios had been on the table, including requiring furlough days or changing the district’s contributions to teachers’ health and retirement benefits.

The union surveyed its members on two options, Murillo said. The first option would have required teachers to take two unpaid days off, but would allow most of the district’s teachers (from the rookies to those in the upper-middle range of the experience ladder) to move up a half-step on the salary schedule. Only the most experienced teachers, those who are earning top pay, wouldn’t get salary bumps to offset the sting of furloughs.

The second option was to freeze step increases across the board. Of the more than 4,600 surveys returned, 81 percent were in favor of the step freeze.

The largest voting bloc — 35 percent — were teachers with fewer than five years experience. Teachers with 14-plus years accounted for 27 percent of the vote, followed by those with six to nine years (21 percent) and 10 to 13 years (17 percent).

“Our members supported the concept of shared sacrifice,” Murillo said.

As reported by the Sun on Monday, the district has also reached a tentative three-year agreement with the Education Support Employees Association, which represents the majority of the district’s 11,400 custodians, school bus drivers, food service workers, clerical staff and other support employees. The deal calls for freezing salaries, delaying step increases and also using the union’s existing medical contribution fund to cover a half-percent increase in the cost of employee retirement contributions and increased medical costs for current workers.

The deal will mean no repeat of last year’s sizable reduction in force, salary cut or furlough days, ESEA President Belinda “Bo” Yealy wrote on the union’s website.

The two tentative agreements would cover about $25 million of the $28 million budget gap.

Deals have not yet been reached with the unions representing the district’s 1,300 school administrators or the 160-office School Police force, which combined account for 5 percent of the district’s 38,500 employees.

The Clark County Association of School Administrators has clashed publicly with Rulffes over closing the budget gap, criticizing his decision to reduce the district’s contribution to its members’ retirement benefits while preserving a similar perk for teachers. An arbitrator sided with the administrators’ union, the district appealed and the matter is headed to court.

Teachers unions nationwide are facing similar challenges to what’s playing out in Clark County, the nation’s fifth-largest school district, said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “There’s no one right way to do this,” Lichtenstein said. “You’re juggling the expectations and pain of a lot of people.”

Lichtenstein said typically teachers aren’t just concerned about their own salaries. Public support is also a factor. And with a contentious legislative session expected in 2011, and the district projecting a shortfall of $200 million to $300 million in state funding for each year of the biennium, it might well help teachers to position themselves as having shared some of the pain this time around.

New York Times: Congress must act to prevent a wave of teacher layoffs

Saving the Teachers

May 6, 2010

Last year’s $100 billion education stimulus plan insulated the public schools from the worst of the recession and saved an estimated 300,000 jobs. With the economy still lagging and states forced to slash their budgets, Congress must act again to prevent a wave of teacher layoffs that could damage the fragile recovery and hobble the school reform effort for years to come.

In March, Representative George Miller, a Democrat of California, introduced a jobs bill that included a $23 billion school rescue plan. Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat of Iowa, has since introduced a similar plan fashioned as an emergency spending bill. The House version is the better of the two.

The need for a second school stimulus plan was underscored on Monday by a new analysis from the American Association of School Administrators, which reported that cash-strapped districts were prepared to cut as many 275,000 jobs in the 2010-2011 school year.

The loss of that many paychecks — and the resulting decline in consumer spending — could kill off still more jobs in the communities where teachers and other school employees live.

Assuming that both houses pass their respective bills, House leaders should insist on two important changes.

First, they should discard ambiguous language in both bills that could allow that states to use the money for expenditures other than education. Second, they should remove a provision of the Senate version that exempts the states from adhering to important reform requirements laid out the original stimulus bill.

Under those conditions, states are barred from cutting school funds and using the new federal dollars to fill the gap. They are also required to create data driven systems for monitoring student progress and evaluating teachers — and to ensure that low-income and minority children are no longer disproportionately taught by unqualified teachers.

Despite arguments to the contrary, the school rescue plan can, in fact, do double duty.

It could both prevent layoffs and advance the cause of reform.

USA Today: Part of the solution is to replace pensions with 401k plans

Ugly truth about state pensions begins to emerge
USA TODAY OPINION
May 3, 2010

Even the most casual observers know the federal government has a serious debt problem that's propelling the USA toward the same cliff as Greece. Less well known is that certain states and localities are even worse off. Or at least their problems are coming to a head sooner, as they have fewer options for kicking the proverbial can down the road.

States can't print money, and they have limits on borrowing. Much of their shortfall, moreover, is the result of pension obligations that are binding contracts, not just political promises. The looming shortfalls were hidden in recent years through a combination of outright deceit and overly rosy projections for annual investment returns. But the truth is now emerging.

Last month, a panel from Stanford University concluded that California's public employee pensions were underfunded by $500 billion. That's about $35,700 per California household. Nationally, the American Enterprise Institute estimates that state pension funds are more than $3 trillion short.

The problem is twofold. Many states have lavish programs that allow workers to retire in their 50s with ample pensions — and health insurance to cover them until Medicare kicks in. Second, regardless of how generous their benefits, some states have simply failed to put away adequate funds to cover them.

These lavish programs are a good deal for public employees and politicians seeking their votes. But the deal is a bitter pill for taxpayers, most of whom are private sector workers without the types of benefits that state and local workers see as their right.

The first thing that must be done is to acknowledge the colossal irresponsibility of lawmakers who have engineered a massive transfer of wealth from non-unionized workers to unionized ones.

The next thing to do is to take steps to limit the damage. One good idea is to move new state and local government employees to 401(k)-type programs. This won't solve the problem of current workers and retirees, but it will keep the problem from getting worse. Alaska and Michigan have already moved broadly in this direction, while several other states have 401(k)s for certain types of employees.

The ability to rein in spending for current workers and retirees varies from state to state. In about a third of the states, pensions are not the result of collective bargaining agreements and can be adjusted within the confines of what is politically possible. Health benefits are often easier to trim, at least from a legal standpoint.

Without dramatic action, it is not difficult to see states such as Illinois and New Jersey falling into downward spirals of tax hikes and service cuts to finance their unaffordable promises.

In New Jersey, recently elected Gov. Chris Christie is finding out how tough the issue is. His state faces massive deficits even though it has some of the highest taxes in the country. With little ability to trim pensions, he is demanding that the teachers' unions agree to pay freezes or layoffs. For his efforts, Christie is being portrayed as a Scrooge-like character who is anti-education. Many other states will soon be forced into the same type of contentious fights.

The story of state pension shortfalls isn't as well known as the national debt. But given the severity of their problems, that probably won't be true for long.

Response: Retirement liabilities are manageable and answer is not to switch to 401k plans

Opposing view: Manageable challenges

By Gerald W. McEntee May 2, 2010

Recently, there have been a number of hysterical media reports concerning the status of America's public employee pension funds. Unfortunately, almost all of them ignore the root causes of the challenges we face. So, it is not surprising that some of the "solutions" advocated by USA TODAY would actually aggravate the problem.

Let's start with some simple facts. The typical public employee represented by AFSCME earns, on average, about $18,500 a year in retirement after a career of public service. For some, this is their only source of retirement income because they do not qualify for Social Security benefits. The employees contribute the bulk of the cost of this benefit, with taxpayers paying 25 cents of every pension benefit dollar.

The deep financial downturn of 2008 and 2009, spurred by recklessness on Wall Street, caused significant problems in many pension funds. But our public pension plans are designed for long-
term stability, and virtually all of them have sufficient resources to weather this financial storm.
More to the point, our pension funds can and will be rebuilt as our economy improves.

To be sure, government at all levels must show considerably more discipline in meeting pension obligations. In the past, too many politicians ignored pension contributions in favor of wasteful
programs or special-interest tax breaks. But proposals to create 401(k) plans don't even address the problems facing us, much less solve them.

Creating a new retirement plan does nothing to erase the debts associated with the old one. With a
new plan, taxpayers will not only be on the hook for the old debt but will also be responsible for funding the new system. For example, a study in California pegged the additional cost to taxpayers at $7.6
billion to shut down the traditional pension system and create a 401(k) plan.

Our nation faces enormous fiscal challenges. But these challenges are manageable if our leaders understand both the source of the problem and the implications of proposed solutions. Unfortunately,
proposals to terminate pension plans in favor of 401(k) plans demonstrate no such understanding.

Gerald W. McEntee is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Study finds most employers view 401k plans as retention, not retirement vehicles

Employers: 401(k)s Won’t Fully Fund Worker Retirement

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US News & World Report May 4, 2010

Employers generally offer 401(k)s to attract and retain productive workers, not to propel those employees into a secure retirement. The majority of companies (51 percent) offer a 401(k) to keep high performing employees happy, according to a recent Wells Fargo and Boston Research survey of 357 employers. Less than half (45 percent) of the firms say their benefit programs primarily aim to help workers achieve a financially sound retirement.

The top 401(k) concerns among plan sponsors are the stock market’s impact on account balances (26 percent) and worker appreciation and use of the plan (25 percent). Only 19 percent of employers have a top priority of providing employees with the financial ability to retire. Just 10 percent of the employers in the survey project each employee’s retirement income and compare it to their expected retirement needs.

However, employers do want to be involved in some aspects of retirement planning. The plan sponsors say their role in retirement savings is to provide 401(k) contributions (95 percent) and help employees understand how much they need to save for retirement (89 percent). Slightly fewer companies are interested in helping employees understand how to invest their savings (71 percent), automatically enrolling workers in the retirement plan (62 percent), and managing employee investments for them (5 percent).

The company representatives surveyed say earning the 401(k) match is the top reason most workers save in a 401(k) (42 percent). Less than a third (30 percent) of the firms indicated that employees utilize the 401(k) primarily to save enough to retire comfortably. Other reasons companies give for employee 401(k) participation include tax breaks (14 percent), automatic enrollment (7 percent), and employer encouragement (5 percent).

Most of the firms in the survey (61 percent) plan to tinker with their 401(k) plan in the next 18 months. The most frequently projected alterations are to increase the number of investment options (14 percent), boost the 401(k) match (12 percent), add a Roth 401(k) option (12 percent), and introduce automatic enrollment (10 percent). Smaller numbers of plan sponsors are interested in adding automatic contribution increases (6 percent), decreasing the 401(k) match (3 percent), or adding an annuity feature to the plan (2 percent).

The employers say their primary goals for 401(k) participants in 2010 are to educate employees about retirement savings needs, increase 401(k) participation, and to increase the amount participants save. Some employers are also interested in promoting investment diversification (9 percent), reducing 401(k) loans and early withdrawals (4 percent), or helping employees to develop a plan to make their retirement savings last for the rest of their life (2 percent).

Pensions at center of dispute over LA’s fiscal future

L.A. city officials dispute former mayor Riordan's bankruptcy prediction

Los Angeles Times May 6, 2010

For decades, public sector unions have peddled the fantasy that government employees were paid less than their counterparts in the private sector. In fact, the pay disparity is the other way around. Government workers, especially at the federal level, make salaries that are scandalously higher than those paid to private sector workers. And let's not forget private sector workers not only have to be sufficiently productive to earn their paychecks, they also must pay the taxes that support the more generous jobs in the public sector.

Data compiled by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis reveals the extent of the pay gap between federal and private workers. As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care and pensions, and the gap grows even bigger. The average federal employee's benefits add $40,785 to his annual total compensation, whereas the average working taxpayer's benefits increase his total compensation by only $9,881. In other words, federal workers are paid on average salaries that are twice as generous as those in the private sector, and they receive benefits that are four times greater.

The situation is the same when state and local government compensation data is compared with that of the private sector. As the Cato Institute's Chris Edwards notes in the current issue of the Cato Journal, "The public sector pay advantage is most pronounced in benefits. Bureau of Economic Analysis data show that average compensation in the private sector was $59,909 in 2008, including $50,028 in wages and $9,881 in benefits. Average compensation in the public sector was $67,812, including $52,051 in wages and $15,761 in benefits." Those figures likely underestimate the true gap on the benefits side because the typical government employee gets a guaranteed defined benefit pension under very generous terms, while the private sector norm is a 401(K) defined contribution plan that is subject to the ups and downs of the economy.

With the federal deficit and national debt heading into the stratosphere, taxpayers can no longer afford to support such lucrative government compensation. Public sector pay and benefits at all levels should be reduced to make it comparable to the wages and benefits earned by the average working taxpayer. The first politician to propose a five-year plan for this purpose is likely to be cheered mightily by taxpayers.!

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has been stirring a municipal hornet's nest over the last few weeks, repeatedly warning that the city he once ran would need to file for bankruptcy unless major policy decisions are made.

His most recent comments were aimed specifically at Mayor Antonio Villaragiosa and the City Council.

But city budget officials have begun to fight back over the last 24 hours, issuing a three-page report that challenges some of Riordan's figures. They also have begun arguing publicly that they inherited some of the city's financial woes from Riordan himself -- particularly its growing pension burden.

In one of the last acts of his administration, Riordan campaigned for a ballot measure that made it possible for police officers and firefighters to receive 90% of their salaries each year once they retire, up from 70%.

That beefed-up pension benefit, which was approved by voters, is seen by some budget analysts as a contributor to the city's pension woes.

"We're having to clean up after the lack of reform in our pension system from that administration," City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, the top budget analyst at City Hall, told a council committee on Wednesday.

The issue has piqued city officials so much that Riordan's recent commentary published in the Wall Street Journal -– and his use of the B-word –- is scheduled for discussion Friday at the council's meeting. Riordan said Thursday that he hasn't received an invitation but thinks that the discussion of his own administration is a waste of time. "The relevant thing is where are we today and what are going to do about it," he said. "To me, it's child's play to look at every sin I've done in my life, because you could spend 100 years doing that."

Riordan, 80, has been discussing municipal bankruptcy as part of a larger campaign to roll back benefits for many of the city's unionized workers. In his writings and remarks, he has argued that public pensions should be replaced with a 401(k) plan for new employees. He also said eligibility for retirement should be hiked to age 65; it currently varies by job classification.

In 2001, Riordan signed the ballot argument for Charter Amendment A, which established that police officers and firefighters could retire as early as 50. In that same election, Riordan endorsed Villaraigosa for mayor.

Riordan backed Villaraigosa in 2005 and again in 2009. Yet the sharpest words in his Wall Street Journal piece were reserved for his longtime ally. "As a result of his delays in responding to the city's fiscal emergency, Mr. Villaraigosa has squandered not just his career, but his relevancy," Riordan wrote, along with former city animal commissioner Alex Rubalcava, president of an investment advisory firm. "He continues to insist that bankruptcy is not an option for Los Angeles even as anyone who can count understands there is no other option."

Santana said the city is taking steps to make sure bankruptcy doesn't happen. And he responded to some of Riordan's recommendations, such as the assertion that the city needs to eliminate $300 million in retiree health benefits. Santana said that the city budget currently contributes $183 million for those benefits.

Riordan also called for the number of public employees to be scaled back to 2005 levels. Santana responded by saying that Villaraigosa's proposed 2010-11 budget does just that. Santana also said Riordan, who left office in 2001, boosted the workforce by 8.5% during his administration, growing it to 35,459 positions.

Riordan has not yet received Santana's position paper. But he said he would sit down with city officials to discuss the city's financial woes at greater length. "The bottom line is, we ought to get together with the experts I rely on and the experts they rely on and see who is right and who's wrong," he said. "But they don't seem to have any interest in doing that."

Girard Miller: Testimony shows we have a long way to go to reach pension sustainability

California's Pension Predicament

Fixing the state's retirement finances is like untangling a Gordian knot.

Governing May 6, 2010

Last month, I testified in Sacramento before a bipartisan commission of the California state legislature, a commission that was founded in 1962 to focus on government reform and efficiency. The members are studying public pension and retirement-plan finance statewide, and will likely conduct another hearing and continue to study the issue. A full copy of my prepared remarks is viewable on their website along with the other testimony, or you can click here.

Overall, I estimated the combined actuarial real-time deficiency of state and local government retirement plans -- including both pensions and retiree medical plans -- at roughly $325 billion. That's almost equal to the total bonded indebtedness of the state and all public agencies in California. One key difference, of course, is that the voters never approved the retirement deficits. They just grew like weeds in an untended field where the sprinklers were left on by neglectful groundskeepers.

The causes of these actuarial deficits are many and varied, as my testimony explained. One of the largest problems I cited was the statewide policy error made between 1998 and 2000 of awarding irreversible and constitutionally protected retroactive benefits increases to public employees. The belief, at the time, was that the then-skyrocketing stock market would continue to grow from the moon to Mars. The implicit assumption back then was that, to pay for these benefits increases, the stock market would magically grow to a 2010 level of 28,000 on the Dow Jones Industrials Average. There are other factors as well, and I urge those who want a complete picture to view all 10 causes I identified.

The constitutional conundrum. In California, as with other states identified in the informative study of professor Amy Monahan of Minnesota, the state constitution's explicit pension protections and some ensuing court cases have been interpreted by many to protect the rights of public employees to an entitlement to receive the same benefits their entire lifetime. With that legal precedent, it becomes virtually impossible to reduce incumbents' benefits prospectively or to change the retirement ages for incumbent employees. Although there are some lawyers in California who argue against that interpretation, few if any public employers are willing to be the guinea pig to test that constitutional issue. Hence, we are stuck in California with a view that the only meaningful change that can legally be made to incumbents' pension or retirement benefits is the contribution level. Thus, retirement reform in the "Golden State for Incumbents" is mostly focused on "new tiers" of reduced benefits for new employees.

If that's the case, then the only really viable long-term solution to California's whopping retirement finance quagmire is to amend the state's constitution. Realizing full well how difficult that path would be, it may be the only real long-term solution to a dysfunctional system with an asymmetrical payoff structure for public employees. I proposed that the Commission explore three such provisions. One would amend the state constitution by raising the retirement age systematically to conform civilian pension ages more closely with Social Security age requirements for younger workers and retiree medical ages with federal Medicare eligibility. For older workers, the amendment could provide for legislative transitional language that makes reasonable upward adjustments in retirement ages without imposing unfair financial hardships. Second, the fundamental laws must be changed to permit the people's elected representatives to bargain with employees to modify the terms of their retirement plans with respect to future service, and to freeze an existing plan or transfer it to an employee-run beneficiary association to liquidate the employer's obligation, as is done in the private sector. Third, California needs to allow local voters to approve a tax increase to fulfill these obligations while maintaining service levels. Otherwise, we have no other alternative to chronic layoffs, hiring freezes and municipal bankruptcy proceedings.

Statutory options. Other suggestions in my testimony could be accomplished by statutory reform. Each is explained in greater detail in the full text:

· Public employees must pay half of the cost of their retirement benefits.

· Public employers must make their actuarially required contributions on a timely basis.

· No retirement benefits increase may be awarded for prior service unless fully funded or approved by a majority of voters.

· A majority of the members of a retirement plan's governing board must be independent trustees. (My testimony also provided a full page of recommendations on governance; I will discuss these in a future column.)

· Labor arbitrators must systematically consider total compensation and prevailing retirement benefits levels offered in the private sector.

· For new employees, the pension formula should be reduced to sustainable and sufficient levels. Employers with the financial capacity to provide additional retirement benefits can add-on a supplemental defined contribution plan without having to fear that they can never turn back.

· No cost-of-living or inflationary increase may be awarded to retirees unless the retirement plan is properly funded or approved by a majority of voters. Pension plans must retain a reserve for adverse markets before they increase benefits in the future.

· CalPERS, the state pension fund, must offer participating agencies greater flexibility in plan designs to provide sustainable and affordable benefits levels.

· Before it increases retirement benefits, the governing body of a public employer must review in public a multi-year fiscal sustainability analysis.

· Newly hired public employees should have the option to participate in a defined contribution retirement program instead of a defined benefit program.

· Finally, the Commission should look into disability pensions, which have been persistently abused in some jurisdictions.

Public officials seeking to reform retirement benefits in other states may find this testimony, and the work of the California commission, of interest and a potential source of ideas and policy language. As the list above suggests, we have a long way to go to make significant headway in achieving sustainable financial plans for public employees' retirement

Update on the GASB’s Pension Accounting and Financial Reporting Project

From GASB staff May 6, 2010

As part of its project to reexamine the effectiveness of its current standards related to postemployment benefits, the GASB plans to issue a Preliminary Views in June 2010 that will present the Board’s views on fundamental employer pension accounting and financial reporting issues. Additional project issues, including employer and plan note disclosures, pension plan financial reporting, and accounting and financial reporting by employers and plans for postemployment benefits other than pensions will be addressed separately.

The major tentative decisions of the Board as of the March 2010 meeting and April 2010 teleconference are summarized below. Further details can be found on the Postemployment Benefit Accounting and Financial Reporting project page at the GASB’s website, www.gasb.org.

· A sole or agent employer incurs a pension obligation to its employees as a result of an employment exchange of salaries and benefits, including defined pension benefits, for employee services.

· For financial reporting purposes, the pension plan becomes primarily responsible, and the employer becomes secondarily responsible, for the pension obligation to the extent plan assets have been accumulated to pay for benefits. The employer remains primarily responsible for the unfunded portion of the pension obligation.

· The unfunded pension obligation meets the definition of a liability and is measurable with sufficient reliability to be recognized as a liability in basic financial statements of a sole or agent employer.

· The projection of benefits for the purpose of measurement of the pension liability should include, to the extent and under the circumstances specified by the Board, automatic cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), projected future ad hoc COLAs, projected future salary increases, and projected future service credits.

· Projected benefit payments should be discounted at the long-term expected yield on plan assets to the extent current and expected pension plan assets are projected to be sufficient to provide for payment of benefits in future periods. Additional benefit payments, if any, beyond that point should be discounted using an appropriate high-quality tax-exempt municipal-bond-index rate.

· The method described in current standards as the entry age actuarial cost method should be used to attribute the present value of expected future benefit payments to financial-reporting periods on a level-percentage-of-payroll basis for liability measurement and expense recognition purposes. Benefits should be attributed to periods over the expected service lives of individual plan members.

· Recognition of pension investment earnings above or below the expected long-term rate of return should be deferred so long as the net cumulative amount of deferred outflow or net cumulative amount of deferred inflow remains within a corridor 15 percent above and below the reported value of plan net assets. However, if the net cumulative deferred balance at the end of a financial reporting period falls outside the corridor, the amount outside the corridor should be recognized as pension expense immediately.

· The effects of certain other changes in the employer’s net pension liability should be recognized as expense by sole and agent employers in a process involving deferral and amortization over the expected remaining service lives of individual plan members.

· An employer in a cost-sharing plan should recognize as its net pension liability, pension expense, and deferred pension outflows (inflows) its proportionate shares of the collective net pension liability, pension expense, and deferred pension outflows (inflows). These collective amounts should be calculated using the same measurement and attribution approaches that previously were tentatively decided on for sole and agent employers. Regarding the frequency and timing of pension measurements for employer accounting and financial-reporting purposes, an employer should report its net pension liability measured as of its fiscal year-end. Additional requirements are to be followed when measuring the liability component, including performing a full measurement (actuarial valuation) at least biennially and updating measures to an employer’s fiscal year-end if a full measurement is not made as of that date.

GASB seeks respondents to survey on fair value

From GASB

GASB Fair Value Survey

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is conducting research on the application and determination of fair value. The experience of practitioners applying fair value measurements under existing accounting requirements will be important to the Board in considering whether to proceed with a project that could affect accounting and financial reporting standards in this area. The survey identifies most of the existing authoritative standards that address fair value and asks about assets and liabilities that are being measured at fair value and those that are not measured at fair value.

To determine what new standards or guidance might be appropriate, the GASB requests your input. Two versions have been prepared—one for preparers and one for auditors.

The preparer version can be found at:

http://72.3.167.244/survey/cgi-bin/fv2.html

The auditor version can be found at:

http://72.3.167.244/survey/cgi-bin/fv1.html

To begin the survey, create a user name and password on the sign-in page. This allows you to exit from the survey and return later to complete it, should you need more time.

The GASB wishes to thank you for your time and attention to this matter. The information you provide is critical to ensuring that the GASB makes fully informed decisions in this project. Any questions can be answered by Randal Finden at 203.956.5240 or rjfinden@gasb.org.

GASB launches new website

From GASB

GASB Relaunches Website

The GASB has relaunched its website, www.gasb.org. The comprehensive site redesign offers more intuitive organization and up-to-date navigational capabilities, which are intended to provide viewers with greater ease of use.

We hope that this new arrangement of content and navigation is helpful in finding the information that you need. If you have any comments you would like to share with the GASB regarding the redesigned site, please contact Kip Betz, GASB assistant project manager, at jcbetz@gasb.org.

Calif. AG sues former pension fund officials for fraud, alleging kickbacks to win investments

Conflict-of-interest charges against former San Diego City pension board members are dismissed

DA Dismisses Charges Against Former Pension Board Members

Girard Miller on NIRS pay study

Out of Balance, or Out of Proportion?

A new look at whether public employees are overpaid.

Opinion: A strategy for reducing outsized public employee pay

How to Tackle Government Labor Costs

Pay freezes, two-tier wages, pension reform—nothing should be off the table.

Sun Archives

Sun Archives

Beyond the Sun

New York Times: Congress must act to prevent a wave of teacher layoffs

Saving the Teachers

Response: Retirement liabilities are manageable and answer is not to switch to 401k plans

Pensions at center of dispute over LA’s fiscal future

L.A. city officials dispute former mayor Riordan's bankruptcy prediction

California's Pension Predicament

Fixing the state's retirement finances is like untangling a Gordian knot.