A new look at how CalSTRS members changed during the last 15 years shows the average teacher working fewer years, retiring at an older age and collecting a pension that grew faster than pay or inflation.

Retirees grew much faster during the period than active workers, increasing from 27 percent to 36 percent of total membership and raising questions about the impact of longer life spans on projected pension costs.

The new CalSTRS demographic report issued last week, done in part to show differences among employer types, covers a period beginning in fiscal 1997-98 as a stock-market boom yielded big earnings for pension fund investments.

A brief pension fund surplus helped prompt legislation in the late 1990s and 2000 that increased pension benefits in several ways, while also cutting the annual employer and employee contributions to the pension fund.

According to the new report, the average final compensation of a K-12 teacher increased 54 percent during the 15-year period, growing from $52,200 in 1997-98 to $80,500 in 2012-13.

The average CalSTRS pension benefit for a K-12 teacher increased 70 percent during the same period, growing from $28,309 in 1997-98 to $48,094 in 2012-13. The California consumer price index grew 48 percent.

Some public employees are more equal than others

At least compared with public safety retirees’ pensions, those pensions look reasonable. But as with the oft-touted claim that the average CalPERS pension is under $30,000, the number needs context. It includes anyone who ever became eligible for a CalSTRS pension — $48,904 is the average for all teachers in the retirement system. But what about teachers who worked 30 years or 35 years, as is common? What is their average pension? That’s the number that’s more telling on the question of fairness.

And the CTA and CFT are never going to convince other public employees that their pensions are fair. Under Gov. Jerry Brown’s initial 2011 pension reform proposal, the state would have been legally committed to having employees share an equal or much closer to equal share of total pension costs by the end of the decade. That got watered down. But what was adopted in 2012 still committed public employees to paying a great share of pension costs.

Except for teachers. The CalSTRS funding overhaul approved earlier this year actually reduced teachers’ relative share of their pension costs. I wrote about this for CalWatchdog here.

The theory was that if employees had to share equally in the huge cost of their pensions, they’d be more amenable to plans to reduce them going forward so as to increase their take-home pay.

But when it came to enforcing this provision — and triggering a fight with the CTA and the CFT — Brown sized up the Sacramento landscape and doesn’t appear to have even tried. The provision in his 2014-15 budget shoring up funding for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System requires that taxpayers foot 90 percent of the [new additional contributions to CalSTRS] and teachers just 10 percent.

It’s an “Animal Farm” thing, you see. Some public employees are more equal than others.

I’ve never seen this special treatment for teachers over public employees detailed in an MSM newspaper story. It’s one more juicy story that the Sacramento set chooses to ignore.

(Editor’s note: The description of the 2012 pension law was corrected after a reader pointed out problems with the original version.)

Some expect it even more than others. Which brings us to the media’s conventional theories as to why Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was defeated in the Democratic primary on Saturday in a landslide by state Sen. David Ige. Yes, Abercrombie angered many Democrats when he refused the request of dying, beloved Sen. Daniel Inouye to appoint Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa as his successor. Yes, Abercrombie wasn’t particularly skilled in selling a positive image.

But if he hadn’t taken on the powerful Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) in 2011 and forced teachers to take a 5 percent pay cut to make the state budget balance, he probably wouldn’t have faced Ige or a serious challenger in the primary. A Honolulu Star-Advertiser analysis from July 31, 2011, notes that Abercrombie only wanted teachers to share the same pain as other public employees:

Abercrombie imposed a “last, best and final offer” that roughly matches the pay cuts taken by the state’s largest public employee union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association.

This led the HSTA to seek out Ige to run for governor. In February, the union formalized its support, giving a huge boost to the obscure lawmaker.

And now Abercrombie is only the second Hawaii governor to ever lose a re-election bid.

CA teachers spared the pension pain facing other public employees

The contrast with Jerry Brown could not be more instructive.

In 2011, the California governor unveiled a pension reform proposal that was unusually ambitious. In an approach similar to Abercrombie’s on the 2011 Hawaii state budget, Brown’s plan held that there should be shared pain to address  a fiscal problem — in this case, the long-term underfunding of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and some local government pension funds. That translated into legislation under which affected employees eventually will have to roughly split the total cost of their pensions with taxpayers.

But this year’s law to shore up the California State Teachers’ Retirement System ignores that framework. Instead, taxpayers will foot 90 percent of the cost of new CalSTRS funding and teachers only 10 percent.

More $ meant for struggling students heads to CA teachers

In California, some public employees are more equal than others. Jerry Brown figured that out long ago.

In Hawaii, the governor only figured that out Saturday.

Meanwhile, there’s more evidence that the Local Control Funding Formula education reform approved last year was a ruse cooked up by Brown, the CTA and CFT to free up more funds for teacher compensation — not primarily a way to help target funds for struggling students. This is from the Sac Bee:

Sacramento-area school districts have begun giving teachers pay raises and bonuses, often retroactively, as they receive more funding from the state.

Twin Rivers Unified, Elk Grove Unified and El Dorado Union High are among the many local school districts that have negotiated raises with their unions that reach back to last year or beyond. The pay hikes are on top of the “step-and-column” increases traditionally given to educators annually based on their years of service and level of education.

The raises come after a 2012 voter-approve tax hike and a multiyear state plan to increase school funding through a new formula intended to direct money to low-income students and English-language learners.

As Cal Watchdog noted last week, this same scenario is unfolding in Los Angeles Unified.

It is not what voters were promised when they backed tax hikes in 2012. It is not what the media were told would happen when the Local Control Funding Formula was enacted in 2013.

But it’s par for the course. In California, as in Hawaii, unions dominate government — especially teacher unions. Mess with their compensation, and you’ll pay a price. And if that means other unions play the role of second-class citizens in Democratic Party politics, so be it.

This week, as reported by Cal Watchdog founding editor Steve Greenhut in his U-T San Diego column, CalSTRS came forward with a proposal to jump-start discussions on how to fix the funding problem. Officials floated …

“… a ‘hypotethetical’ plan that would allow them to increase the amount of money they collect from teachers to reduce the pension debt. In exchange for that give-back from teachers, CalSTRS would guarantee a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment every year. Currently, retirees receive that annual boost – but it is not a ‘vested’ right. The Legislature can take it away any time that it chooses.

“Because of state law, CalSTRS must gain legislative approval for any new dollars it seeks.  …

“CalSTRS explains in its legal analysis that public employees cannot have their vested benefits reduced unless they receive a ‘comparable new advantage.’ So these pension-fund officials are arguing that ‘vesting’ the annual boost — making it a guarantee rather than an option — is an advantage that more than offsets the contribution increases. They provided legislators with a complicated actuarial formula backing that point.

“It’s a clever effort by CalSTRS to find some way to gin up the struggling system’s funding levels given a legal and political situation that offers few cost-saving options. But it could cost more than it gets in return.”

Usual approach to pension reform involves concessions

Steve makes a strong case that this is a “fix” that could make current problems worse.

But I have an additional, more unconventional thesis: There is no way to reconcile deeply held beliefs among some of the various “stakeholders” here. It’s impossible to imagine a compromise that the 500,000-plus members of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers would find remotely acceptable.

Under the funding formula written in state law, teachers’ employers pay a sum equal to 8.25 percent of their pay toward pension costs; teachers contribute 8 percent of their pay; and the state contributes in two ways to the cost. As of 2015, per Calpensions.com’s Ed Mendel, the state contribution will be equal to 6 percent of pay.

But 22.25 percent of pay isn’t nearly enough to cover CalSTRS’ liabilities. A 2012 analysis suggested between 36 percent and 37 percent of pay is needed to cover “normal” costs of retirement for veteran teachers.

So where do we go from here?

In California, in recent years, we’ve established a framework for stabilizing underfunded pensions: Both governments and employees contribute significantly more toward pensions, and new hires get less generous benefits.

Are some unions more equal than others?

Two of those three things could easily happen in Sacramento. Even Republican lawmakers have long since acknowledged the state needs to pay more to shore up CalSTRS. And veteran teachers would make a show of indignation about a change that the Maviglians of the world would depict as throwing young teachers under the bus, then go along with it.

But the third thing — the significant increase in teacher contributions — is about as likely to happen as Cruz Bustamante making a triumphant return to statewide office. This would mean a significant drop in take-home pay. The CTA and CFT won’t stand for that.

Remember, the easiest way to understand how Sacramento works is to begin with the presumption that the no. 1 priority of elected Democrats is protecting union teachers.

Example: The complicated change in education funding known as the “Local Control Funding Formula” was adopted last year by the Legislature in shockingly quick fashion. It sharply limited the state mandates on how local districts must spend their funds so officials could ensure more money went to help English-learners and the most academically challenged. But depending on the follow-through, the eliminating of those mandates could have as its primary effect freeing up money to compensate teachers — not helping struggling students. Why else would the bill have passed as quickly?

If the CTA and CFT are that ruthless and Machiavellian — and they are, they are — there is no way they’ll go along with a cut in teacher take-home pay.

Even if other public employee unions have accepted pension reforms that made the same concession.

By Chris Reed

Happy New Year’s, everybody. I am sure that 2013 is the year that California turns the corner. OK, maybe not. But I am confident there will be 12 months this year, the Mayan crisis having passed.

The balance of power in California is so tilted in favor of public employee unions that I’ve often compared it hyperbolically to another one-party state, the one based in Pyongyang. But a story in the San Jose Mercury-News brings to mind another allegory for California: George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” an amazingly durable fable about how power corrupts, the failed promise of collectivism and the disaster that was Stalinism for the socialist cause.

When the animals in Orwell’s novella take over Mr. Jones’ farm, they adopt the Seven Commandments of Animalism, in which the most important of the seven is the guarantee that all animals are equal. By novel’s end, the pigs have taken over, and the Seven Commandments have been boiled down to one: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

In California, the Legislature kills legislation that would allow school districts to quickly fire teachers who are actual sexual predators. But what about public employees who watch depravity but don’t actually do things like feeding semen to schoolkids? If they’re not teachers, typically they’re out of luck and soon out of a job. This is from Monday’s Merc-News:

“The head of San Mateo County’s probation department retired Monday under the cloud of an investigation by federal authorities into whether he had child pornography, officials said.

“A family member of Stuart J. Forrest filed paperwork with the county’s public worker retirement system that made his departure effective immediately, county spokesman Marshall Wilson said.

“He had been on paid administrative leave from his $140,000 a year salary position since Dec. 21, when news broke of the investigation. …. Forrest began working for the probation department in November 1977 and was named its chief in April 2009. …

“If Forrest is charged and convicted of a crime, it could mean forfeiting rights to a county pension. Under a broadening of state law to take effect in January, public workers convicted of a job-related felony will lose their retirement benefits, according to Government Code section 7522.70.”

Yes, I get the point that all public employees in California are subject to loss of pension for a job-related felony, including teachers. But the story of Mark Berndt and how the Los Angeles Unified School District had to pay him $40,000 to get rid of him remains sickening.

You don’t see most white-collar unions putting up obstacles to removal of perverts from their jobs, much less succeeding with this tactic.

Yet in California Teachers Association-occupied Sacramento, that’s exactly what happened. The Seven Commandments of Unionism no longer hold sway. Instead, all public employees are equal, but some public employees are more equal than others.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

California policy makers are busy mandating wind and solar farms in its deserts. But along its coastline, the Water Quality Resources Control Board is busy enforcing inconsistent environmental policy right out of George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm.”

Orwell wrote: “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”

So it seems with the California Water Quality Resources Control Board’s apparently inconsistent policy of mandating that 19 California coastal power plants must stop using ocean water to cool their steam-generating power plants (called “once through cooling” technology) in order to protect marine life.

At issue is a mandate from the California’s State Water Resources Control Board to stop the loss of 57 seals, sea lions or sea turtles per year from ocean water intake systems to cool steam-generated coastal power plants. By contrast, California’s projected 18,000 wind turbines would kill more than 75,000 birds per year with no consistent order to halt such impacts. (That’s estimated at 4.27 bird kills per turbine per year by Nature Magazine.)

Instead, the Water Board is requiring coastal power plants to use either costly fresh water or air-cooling systems to protect marine life from being sucked into its water intake pipes. With fresh water resources in short supply along California’s coastline and a seeming official definition that drought is perpetual, it seems inconsistent to mandate a switch to costly fresh water or precious groundwater supplies to cool coastal power plants.

Only a Water Board in California could come up with a regulation to import river water hundreds of miles away from the Colorado River or the Sacramento Delta to cool power plants next to the ocean to protect a few seals and turtles. Biologists might say that this policy just results in taking fresh water from salmon populations in the Sacramento Delta.  But the Water Quality Act doesn’t factor environmental tradeoffs into its regulations.

There are groundwater basins near power plants along the urban coastline, but drawing water from them for power plant cooling might create another problem: sea water intrusion into local water aquifers. There is no way under the Water Quality Act to consider whether environmental regulations create even worse environmental impacts. Every solution breeds new and sometimes even worse problems.

Rejecting Alternatives

Despite an appeal to no less than the U.S. Supreme Court, the Water Board has thus far rejected the use of a cost-benefit analysis or less costly alternative mitigation methods to protect marine wildlife.  The Water Board’s policy might be internally consistent with its interpretation of the Water Quality Act but, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, is it “a foolish consistency that is the hobgoblin of foolish minds”?

What is the reason for such a double standard of protecting marine life but not bird life described above? Is it to further an environmentalist agenda to bring the cost of nuclear energy and natural-gas-generated power more equal to green power so that it can compete in the electricity market?

Or is shutting down California’s two non-polluting nuclear power plants possibly just to appease nuclear power opponents? There is no way to know. It certainly is environmentally inconsistent and makes no economic sense.

California has an inconsistent policy of no oil drilling platforms within visual distance of its coastline unless camouflaged, and a zero tolerance policy for any loss of marine life from coastal power plants.

On the other hand, California does not have the same standard for large wind or solar farms in desert areas with visually blighting win turbines and solar panels and the accompanying loss of bird life and disturbance of turtle habitats.

Nor does it seem consistent when geothermal power plants in northern California require 11 million gallons of additional “treated wastewater” from a 30-mile pipeline from the City of Santa Rosa. And to think that environmentalists are concerned about the impacts of oil and gas “fracking” on deep subterranean water supplies that are no source to plant or animal life and would be diluted in any event.

One can rationalize the inconsistent policy of the State Water Board by saying that it must comply with the Federal Water Quality Act while wind farms must only comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  But if the loss of a small number of marine mammals and fish is really an issue, then why not just prohibit commercial fishing or fresh water sport fishing?  All animals are equal, aren’t they?

Delta Smelt

Or what about the environmental lawsuit that resulted in a court-ordered shutdown of 90 percent of water deliveries to farms and cities from 2007 to 2010 to protect a few tiny sardine-like smelt fish in the Sacramento Delta?

According to those who filed the lawsuit, the smelt had become nearly extinct from the Delta due to the hydraulic pumps on the California Aqueduct. But the smelt uses its small size and transparency to hide from predator fish and concentrate in cooler deep water during droughts, according to Peter B. Moyle, “Inland Fishes of California,” p. 228.

No mention was made in the media that cutting 90 percent of water deliveries probably wiped out uncounted thousands of striped and largemouth bass, catfish, carp, bluegill and crappie fish that live in the California Aqueduct. Environmental protection is a highly selective and inconsistent process in California.

If archaeologists thousands of years from now have to excavate a 300-mile pipeline to provide cooling water to coastal power plants, they would be mystified at finding a rational answer for it without understanding the politicized bureaucratic culture that produced it.

We can’t look to so-called environmental science or the legalistic scripture of the Federal Water Quality Act to understand all the inconsistencies and absurdities in energy and water policies in California. Sometimes we can find insight in novels such as Jane Austen’s “Lady Susan” where the main character writes in a letter to a friend: “In short, when a person is always to deceive, it is impossible to be consistent.”

It is apparent that politics, not impacts to plant or animal life, is what really drives environmental policy in California.