Your pensions: the anger builds

The hostility towards defined benefit pensions and pay and benefits in general earned by law enforcement officers is dramatic. It’s been a real pile-on. Here’s just a few of the stories we found.

Forbes Magazine

In the article “Generous Pensions Give New Meaning To ‘If It’s Too Good To Be True,” Professor Ronald Rotunda writes:

“If something is too good to be true, it probably is. That old saw applies to the generous pension that states and cities routinely promise. If private companies ran their pensions the way most states do, their officers would risk civil and criminal penalties for fraud. Nationally, state plans covering public employees of cities, police, etc. are underfunded by $1.4 trillion, or 14 followed by 11 zeros. To correct that underfunding, you have to take the entire gross domestic product of Norway, add it to Belgium, and throw in Austria, and give all that to the states.”
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Hey she may look hot, but the only thing she’s really hot after is your pension – Terri Lee Ryan.

Chicagonow.com

A so called “employment specialist named Terri Lee Ryan writes in a piece entitled, “Are Chicago Illinois Pensions Fair to the Rest of Us’: “Pensions for government workers continue to drag on the Illinois economy, adding to the already out of control debt, of which our state can ill afford. It is an issue that needs to be addressed in the near term to get our state out of the red and support needed programs that are getting left behind due lack of money. Read the entire piece if you have a strong stomach.

Detroit Free Press

More bad news for Detroit cops. Detroit Free Press reporter Joe Guillen writes that Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr wants to freeze Detroit’s two pension funds at the end of the year, a move that would stop city workers from accumulating any more service time and shut out new employees from joining the existing pension plans. A new, 401(k)-style pension plan would be set up for city workers, and the city would contribute a portion of an employee’s base pay — 10% for police officers and firefighters, and 5% for non-uniformed workers — to his or her retirement plan.