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Want to retire rich and young? Join a Union and get a City job.
Its disgusting how much money the police and fire unions have strong armed their benefits. Unions continue to cripple the entities they serve. We the taxpayers suffer. Look at how many City employees are retiring in the late 40's with $100K+ pensions.
Municipal pensions a bonanza for employees, a burden for cities
After more than two decades working in Miami Beach’s 911 call center, Pamela Kindle wanted her golden parachute.
Her $60,000-a-year job would provide a modest pension for retirement, but Kindle wanted more. So, she launched into a “marathon” of overtime, racking up an extra 50 hours of work a week during her final two years on the job.
When she retired in 2002, Kindle did so with a $150,000 taxpayer-supported pension. Yearly increases have pumped up her pension to more than $182,000.
“I earned my money,” said Kindle, 63, who says the city helped create her pension by perennially understaffing the call center. “I worked hard.”
By the time she reaches her mid-70s, the city’s pension fund will have paid her $4,074,000 in her golden years.
Scores of South Florida city employees, particularly police and firefighters, have recently retired in their mid to late 40s or early 50s with six-figure pensions, the result of generous pay and benefits packages that are now costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year.
The deals were agreed to by elected officials in negotiations with politically potent employee unions — especially police and fire unions, whose members face the biggest risks but enjoy higher pay and better benefits.
During the real estate boom, there was plenty of money for pay raises and perks, even as employers in the private sector were ratcheting down health benefits and phasing out traditional pensions in favor of self-funded 401(k) plans.
Then it all went sour.
Cities, financially kneecapped by plunging property-tax revenues, stock market reversals and their own generosity, found pension costs eating up a rapidly growing chunk of their operating budgets — one out of every five dollars in Miami Beach, one out of four in Hollywood.
Those cities and others are now trying to take back what they promised. That has sent employees rushing toward the exits. A year ago, as pay and pension reductions imposed by Miami’s elected officials were about to take effect, more than 250 employees retired on the same day. The same thing is happening in Hollywood, where voters last week approved dramatic reductions in employee pensions.
WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO RETIRE
Actually, in municipal government-speak, “retiring” doesn’t mean leaving the job now. In another perk not enjoyed by private-sector employees, it often means entering a years-long transition phase called the Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP, during which the worker remains on the job, earning both a salary and a pension benefit that is held in a savings account.
How generous are city pensions? More generous than pensions paid through the state’s retirement system, although the state has hundreds of six-figure pensioners. The Florida Retirement System, likened to a millstone weighing down the state budget, last year paid out an average yearly retirement benefit of $18,000.
By contrast:
• In Miami Beach, of the 38 police and firefighters who began receiving a pension in fiscal year 2009, 26 did so in their 40s with an average retirement benefit of $104,000 — and a promised annual increase of 2.5 percent.
• In Coral Gables, pension formulas that factor in hundreds of hours of overtime in addition to base pay and bonuses are allowing many to retire, like Kindle, with pensions significantly larger than their base salary. Examples: Fire Lt. Jeffrey Fabyan, 48, whose $106,000 pension dwarfs his $81,000 base salary; fire Lt. Donald Griffiths, 50, whose base pay is $81,720 but whose pension is $108,606; and police Sgt. John McRae, 49, whose salary is $79,414 but who will collect a $99,297 pension.
• Of the 154 Miami police and firefighters who “retired” (actually entered the DROP) on Sept. 26, 2010, 55 have annual pensions in excess of $100,000, 10 of them greater than $150,000. The latter group includes Chief Fire Officer Ronald Khawly, who transitioned into retirement at 52 with a pension of $181,856; Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur (44, with a pension of $166,687) and Chief Fire Officer Joe Burns (54, with a pension of $165,910).
• In Hollywood, firefighters who left the city’s employ since 2008 after eight years in the DROP program have walked away with savings accounts of $500,000 or more, some as high as $1 million.
“Pensions can’t be as rich as they have been,’’ said Hollywood Commissioner Beam Furr. “When you are in the public service, you shouldn’t be expecting to become rich. You shouldn’t be expecting to become suddenly a millionaire, and that has happened.”
But employees like Khawly, who said he earned only a $16,000 salary when he began his tenure with the Miami Fire Department around 1980, are proud and protective of what they have earned through hard and sometimes dangerous work.
“I take offense to it when someone makes those kind of comments,” said Khawly. “I’m out risking my life while everyone is sleeping in bed with their wives.”
Jeff Marano, senior vice president of the Broward Police Benevolent Association, said city officials and administrators mismanaged taxpayers’ finances during the past decade’s property-tax boom and now are scapegoating employees.
“The conspiracy of the day is that we’re the villains — public employees are the villains,” Marano said. “But that’s not the reality.’’
The average retiree doesn’t come close to raking in a six-figure pension. But with negotiated formulas that have allowed employees to factor into their pensions overtime, unused vacation and sick days, municipal employees have been retiring far younger and more comfortably than those in private industry.
So young that they can enjoy a second act. Donald De Lucca, the former Miami Beach police chief who retired in his 40s and cashes a $182,000-and-growing yearly retirement benefit, recently was hired as chief of the Golden Beach department at $100,000 a year, according to the town manager.
Pension analysts say city officials and unions both bear responsibility for the current excesses.
“Unions didn’t do it, and cities didn’t do it alone,” said Fred Nesbitt, retired executive director of the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems. “They did it together.’’
STATE PENSIONS VS. CITY PENSIONS
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/1...#ixzz1YnkFd54R
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Originally Posted by Carlos Miller
