“Work in Progress” Government Employee Pay Tracker Still Grossly Inaccurate
“Work in Progress” Government Employee Pay Tracker Still Grossly Inaccurate
Since reporting on the State Controller’s government employee pay tracker last month (ref. California State Controller’s Employee Pay Tracker Grossly Understates Actual Compensation), the State Controller’s Office has responded to one of our concerns, writing: “…it is possible in certain situations to have the data from the Controller’s GCC database sorted by city or county. ...
By Edward Ring
California State Controller’s Employee Pay Tracker Grossly Understates Actual Compensation
California State Controller’s Employee Pay Tracker Grossly Understates Actual Compensation
California state controller John Chiang has unveiled a website that tracks public employee pay. Unfortunately, the website provides grossly misleading information. The data compiled and summarized on this website report average wages that are literally one half to one-third the amount of total compensation actually earned by California’s state and local public servants. The impact...
By Edward Ring
Costa Mesa, California – City Employee Compensation Analysis
Costa Mesa, California – City Employee Compensation Analysis
October 3, 2012 If San Jose and San Diego are ground zero for the grassroots battle to reform public sector pensions – in California at least – then Costa Mesa may be ground zero for an even broader public sector reform agenda. Because the city council in Costa Mesa has a majority of members who...
By Edward Ring
California Public Sector Union Revenue Exceeds $1.0 Billion Per Year
California Public Sector Union Revenue Exceeds $1.0 Billion Per Year
In today’s Sacramento Bee an article by Jon Ortiz entitled “What California state workers pay in union dues and fees” provided current data on the revenue of unions organizing state workers. It only takes a minor exercise in extrapolation to use this data to estimate the annual revenue of unions organizing all government workers in...
By Edward Ring
Anaheim, California – City Employee Compensation Analysis
Anaheim, California – City Employee Compensation Analysis
August 29, 2012 Earlier this year the California Policy Center obtained from the city of Anaheim a comprehensive record of all payroll-related disbursements for 2011. This information was provided in the form of a spreadsheet that provided compensation details for every full and part-time employee of the city of Anaheim during 2011. We performed subsequent...
By Edward Ring
San Jose, California – City Employee Total Compensation Analysis
San Jose, California – City Employee Total Compensation Analysis
August 10, 2012 On June 5, 2012 the City of San Jose thrust itself into the forefront of the national debate over public sector pensions with its passage of Measure B, a landmark measure that dramatically restructured the pension and retirement benefits of the city’s current employees. Though the internal pressure that led to this...
By Edward Ring
Understanding the Financial Disclosure Requirements of Public Sector Unions
Understanding the Financial Disclosure Requirements of Public Sector Unions
June 12, 2012 As political scholars and pundits across the nation continue with their post-mortem analysis of the disastrous recall effort against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, one charge that has gained a significant amount of traction has been that the recall campaign against the governor was overwhelmed by the amount of “secret and corporate money”...
By Edward Ring
Why Lower Rates of Return Will Destroy Pension Funds
Why Lower Rates of Return Will Destroy Pension Funds
May 18, 2012 As reported today in Capitol Weekly, in a post entitled “CalPERS ignores Brown, delays pension payment” by Ed Mendel, the amount taxpayers will have to fork over to CalPERS next year will rise by $213 million, to a total of $3.7 billion. Governor Brown, quite rightly, believes the full amount of the...
By Edward Ring
A Pension Analysis Tool for Everyone
A Pension Analysis Tool for Everyone
April 2, 2012 A concern often voiced by pension reform activists and politicians interested in better understanding pension finance is that they have to depend solely on the information delivered by actuaries. This information, in turn, is typically delivered in a report so voluminous and so technical that the activists and politicians have to hire...
By Edward Ring
Public Sector Unions Spend $4.0 Billion per Year in U.S.
Public Sector Unions Spend $4.0 Billion per Year in U.S.
March 23, 2012 In an earlier post, “Public Sector Unions & Political Spending,” we tried to estimate political spending by public sector unions in California. The top-down analysis used was straight-forward and conservative: assume 1.0 million unionized public sector workers, times average dues of $750 per year, times one-third (the proportion of dues used for...
By Edward Ring
Self-Employed Workers vs. Government Workers – A Financial Comparison
Self-Employed Workers vs. Government Workers – A Financial Comparison
February 24, 2012 When discussing what level of compensation is appropriate and affordable for government workers, it is helpful to make apples-to-apples comparisons between public and private sector workers. In this analysis, the ultimate private sector taxpayer, the self-employed worker, is compared to the typical state or local government employee in California. In both cases,...
By Edward Ring
The Ideology of Public Sector Unions vs. Private Sector Unions
The Ideology of Public Sector Unions vs. Private Sector Unions
It would be a simplification – not entirely inaccurate – to characterize the labor movement leadership in the United States of having a leftist, if not socialist ideology. But such a generalization ignores the wide schism that exists between the elites who run America’s labor movement and their members. Equally important, such a generalization ignores...
By Edward Ring
How Much Could California's Government Pensions Cost Taxpayers?
How Much Could California's Government Pensions Cost Taxpayers?
January 27, 2012 This week both of California’s largest government employee pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, released their portfolio earnings numbers for the most recent twelve months. In a statement released on January 24th, “CalSTRS Calendar Year-End Investment Returns Show Slight Gains,” CalSTRS disclosed “Investment returns for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) ended...
By Edward Ring
America’s Atlas Generation – The Forgotten 33%
America’s Atlas Generation – The Forgotten 33%
Much has been made of the 1% vs. the 99%; the “super-rich” vs. the rest of us, who are presumably the hard working, loyal Americans who’ve been left behind. But who are the rest of us, and how does who we are affect how much we pay in taxes, and how we may vote? The...
By Edward Ring