Jerry: What are your pension numbers?

by CalWatchdog Staff | August 13, 2010 6:49 pm

[1]John Seiler:

The Orange County Register ran a great story today [2]about Jerry Brown’s mysterious pensions. The paper’s reporters spent many days trying to figure out what he will get once he finally leaves the state government, and still got only part of the story. He’s held numerous posts over the past half-century.

They’re going to continue working on it. It’s one of those convoluted government situations where special deals were made for a few people. Jerry’s one of them.

What Jerry should do is release all his pension data. He’s for clean and open government, isn’t he?

Here’s the Register:

After more than a month of investigation, the Watchdog can only say for certain that Brown and a handful of other top officials are eligible for generous benefits under a special pension fund so obscure that few people in government know how it works and many thought it had been eliminated 20 years ago by outraged voters.

Under the law, Brown should have accrued, at most, 16 years of service credit in this special fund, known as the Legislators’ Retirement System, or LRS. Actuarial statements produced by LRS, however, indicate that an unnamed person of Brown’s age and earning Brown’s exact salary has been credited with 25 to 29 years of service. The difference would mean tens of thousands of dollars in additional pension payments for Brown each year.

Brown’s campaign staff acknowledge the unnamed person sure looks like the gubernatorial candidate but have been unable to explain the discrepancy over service.
Officials at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which manages LRS, have similarly refused to cooperate, saying the law forbids them from answering questions about specific individuals. Meanwhile, The Watchdog has sought help from the offices of seven state lawmakers, one constitutional officer and one state department as well three outside pension experts and not one has been able to explain the discrepancy.
It’s a mystery as persistent as LRS itself.

More here…[3]

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2010/08/13/jerry-what-are-your-pension-numbers/

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