Articles for category CalPERS
Posted Jun 13, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
Health Care
State Economy
Retirement
CalPERS today approved a roughly 9.5 percent increase in health insurance premiums. The pension fund's governing board voted unanimously to approve the increase, which will cost the average CalPERS member another $30 a month in premiums. The increase takes effect Jan. 1.
It represents one of the biggest increases in years for CalPERS, which covers 1.3 million public workers and retirees and is one of the largest purchasers of the health care in the nation.
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Posted Jun 13, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
State Economy
Retirement
As Friday's state budget deadline approaches, a little-noticed provision in Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal would cut off thousands of retirees who return to work for the state.
The idea targets all but the most essential of the state's so-called "retired annuitants," a group of about 5,800 workers who drew $110 million in pay from the state last year on top of their pensions.
The Democratic governor's proposal could strike a chord with taxpayers by appearing to crack down on double-dipping. It also appeals to public employee unions – which want to eliminate jobs they believe stunt the growth of the regular workforce – at the same time he's asking union workers to accept furloughs and a 5 percent pay cut.
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Posted Jun 08, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
State Economy
State Employees
For the first time, California's Highway Patrol officers are going to be furloughed.
The union reached an agreement at with Gov. Jerry Brown that furloughs Patrol officers 8 hours per month for one year starting July 1. Officers can bank the hours to take later, but their paychecks will reflect the 5 percent pay reduction regardless.
Department of Personnel Administration spokeswoman Lynelle Jolley confirmed the agreement. Jon Hamm, CEO of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, said that the language of the agreement encourages officers to take their banked furlough time before taking paid vacation.
The Brown administration had said that it wanted to avoid a policy that allowed banking furlough hours because that leads to employees taking less paid leave, creating a deferred cost for the state when the leave credits with monetary value are cashed out at the end of an employees' career.
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Posted Jun 07, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
State Employees
Tuesday's landslide pension reform votes in San Diego and San Jose were just the early tremors in what could become a public pension earthquake by the end of this month.
The big question: What does this mean for pension reform legislation at the Capitol?
Gov. Jerry Brown, who has floated a 12-point pension reform plan, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter on Wednesday that the vote in liberal San Jose was "a very powerful signal" that pension reform is "an imperative" that he's putting "at the top of the agenda." Brown thinks pension reform will make his tax initiative more palatable to voters in November, although he hasn't talked about it much until now.
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Posted Jun 06, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
Politics
State Employees
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won a vote to keep his job on Tuesday, surviving a recall effort that turned the Republican into a conservative icon and his state into the first battleground in a bitter, expensive election year.
Walker defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D). That made Walker the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election; two others had failed.
Exit polls showed that Democrats had captured nearly 69 percent of the voters who made up their minds in the past few days. But it wasn’t enough.
Instead, the night provided a huge boost for Walker — as well as Republicans in Washington and state capitals who have embraced the same energetic, austere brand of fiscal conservatism as a solution for recession and debt. In a state known for a strong progressive tradition, Walker defended his policies against the full force of the labor movement and the modern left.
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Posted Apr 18, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
State Economy
Retirement
The line at CalPERS' customer service window is getting longer.
After converting to a half-billion-dollar computer system to process benefits for hundreds of thousands of California public agency retirees last September, backlogs for some services are worse than before the project launched.
The new hardware and software installed by New York-based tech firm Accenture aimed to consolidate 49 old data systems into one when it launched last September, two years late at nearly twice its original $279 million budget. The California Public Employees' Retirement System committed another $6.8 million in December, bringing the total cost to $514 million. The money has come from CalPERS assets, currently valued at $234 billion.
Meanwhile, fund members have complained that a system intended to speed up service and boost efficiency has done the opposite.
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Posted Apr 04, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirement
A new study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office provides additional insight into the challenges facing not only California’s pension system, but also public pensions across the country.
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Posted Mar 19, 2012 by
CalPERS
Retirees
Politics
When the city manager of troubled Stockton, Calif., had to tell city council members why it was on track to become the biggest American city yet to go bankrupt, it took hours to get through the list.
There was the free health care for retirees, the unpaid parking tickets, the revenue bonds without enough revenue to pay them. On it went, a grim drumbeat of practically every fiscal malady imaginable, except an obvious one: municipal pensions. Stockton is spending some $30 million a year to pay for them, but it has less than 70 cents set aside for every dollar of benefits its workers expect.
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Posted Feb 09, 2012 by
CalPERS
Politics
Retirement
The cause of pension reform in California took a significant body shot Wednesday when a group hoping to put an overhaul measure before voters this year suspended its campaign.
Beleaguered by fundraising problems and questions about the viability of its proposals, California Pension Reform shut down its efforts. The group's officials blamed the demise on a "false and misleading" summary of the plan by Attorney General Kamala Harris, a charge the Democrat denied.
The death of California Pension Reform's efforts also wounded Gov. Jerry Brown's pension proposals to the Democratic-controlled Legislature, one analyst said, by removing the threat of a more draconian measure going before voters.
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Posted Oct 06, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
Retirement
State Employees
A new study by the Center for Retirement Research and Boston College refutes the notion that state and local government workers as a group end up a lot richer than their private sector counterparts. [Read More...]
Posted Oct 06, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
State Economy
Retirement
Approximately half of California workers will retire in or near poverty, according to a study published Monday by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. [Read More...]
Posted Oct 05, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
Health Care
The time for CalPERS members to make changes to their health plan or add eligible family members begins Oct. 10 and continues through Nov. 4. In mid-August, CalPERS Open Enrollment packets were mailed to eligible members. [Read More...]
Posted Oct 04, 2011 by
CalPERS
General News
State Economy
Retirement
Nearly half of California workers will retire in or near poverty, shows a new study released by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, "California Workers’ Retirement Prospects."
While retirement security is and will be a problem in the whole of the nation, the situation is worse in California, because California workers have less access to employer retirement plans than workers in the United States as a whole, according to the study authors.
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Posted Sep 09, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
CalPERS Sept. 7, 2011 -- CalPERS is consolidating 49 different computer systems into one new integrated system this September. This new system will streamline many CalPERS processes as well as decrease dependency on paper documents. New member self-service capabilities will be introduced in 2012.
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Posted Sep 09, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
Retirement
CalPERS, Sept. 9, 2011
On November 4, 2011, the CalPERS Office of Stakeholder Relations will host a second Northern California recruitment meeting to identify CalPERS beneficiaries for the CalPERS Ambassador Program. The November 4 meeting is a repeat of the popular kick-off meeting held in Sacramento on May 26.
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Posted Jul 18, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
State Economy
Retirement
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) July 18 reported a 20.7 percent return on investments in preliminary estimates for the one-year period that ended June 30, 2011.
“This is our best annual performance in 14 years,” said Rob Feckner, CalPERS Board President. “For the second straight fiscal year, the Pension Fund exceeded its long-term annualized earnings target [Read More...]
Posted Jul 13, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
Retirement
CalPERS Board run-off election candidates, Michael Bilbrey and Richard Ross, participated in a candidate forum sponsored by PERSwatch on July 6, 2011. A video of the forum is now available for viewing online via YouTube. Ballot packages for the run-off election were mailed to eligible voters on June 30, 2011.
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Posted Jul 13, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
State Economy
Retirement
Benefit payments in 2010 by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension, spurred more than $26 billion in economic activity in the state, the fund said in a report.
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Posted Jul 13, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
State Economy
State Employees
CalPERS benefit payments rippled through the California economy last year, generating $26 billion in economic activity and supporting more than 93,600 jobs across the state, Anne Stausboll, Chief Executive Officer of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, told a Washington, D.C., conference today.
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Posted Jul 12, 2011 by
CalPERS
Retirees
General News
State Employees
From California to Florida, many public employees are paying more for their pensions now than a year ago as strapped state and local governments cast about for savings.
Now a sweeping Republican proposal in the California Senate, among other changes, would hike how much all current and future state and local government workers pay toward their pensions.
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