The Burlingame Voice

Friends with Benefits: CalPERS gets 11.2%

Anyone paying attention knows that public pension costs are climbing, investment returns have been overestimated and the funding in place is inadequate to cover the future costs.  This week, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, we got some up-to-date details

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest in the U.S., earned 11.2% in fiscal 2017—largely because of stocks and private equity. But the fund, known by its acronym Calpers, noted that it has just 68% of the assets it needs to pay for future benefits. That is up from 65% in 2016.

“We welcome this fiscal year’s strong returns, but we also remain about 68 percent funded and vulnerable to a downturn in stock markets,” Calpers Chief Executive Marcie Frost said in a statement. The fund has about $332 billion in assets for 1.8 million workers and retirees.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which sits roughly one mile from Calpers in Sacramento, Calif., reported a fiscal 2017 return of 13.4%. The fund’s chief investment officer, Christopher Ailman, touted the number on Twitter as being higher than Calpers: “BOOYAH!!”

This ties to B'game since CalPERS does the investing for city pensions and benefits.  Back on July 24th, the Daily Post noted that the pension shortfall for our burg "has swelled to $51.9 million, up 5.3% from two years ago".  The city has set aside $3.7 million this fiscal year to use in whatever strategy it chooses to close the widening gap:  extra payments earlier--either recurring or ad hoc--or tapping the general fund reserves or borrowing.  More to follow as the Council decides.

Minimum State Wage

Buried deep in the Mercury News article about Jerry Brown's chatter on the next state budget is this little gem

And the state's new $15-an-hour minimum wage will be phased in for many on the state payroll over the next few years. So the administration anticipates a shortfall of $4 billion by 2019 -- or worse if the economy slides back into recession.

Did our legislators know that there would be a lot of state workers getting the bump to 15 bucks an hour?  Of course they did.  Does the public know how many?  Nope.  So the budget is smaller because there is less OPM (Other Peoples' Money) to go around yet expenses are going up like

One spending increase touted by Brown on Friday was his administration's investment in K-12 schools and community colleges.  The revised spending plan increases state funding per student to more than $10,500 -- an increase of $3,600 compared with 2011-12.

If you do the math (correctly) that is a 52-plus percent increase in five years for schools and community colleges.  Wow!

Prop. 30 Extension

Death and Taxes.  Like death, many taxes are permanent even if they are sold to the public as temporary.  Such may become the case with Proposition 30 passed in November 2012 by an 11% margin and retroactive to the beginning of that year.  Don't you just love retroactive taxation?  Prop. 30 added .25% to the state sales tax (now 7.5%) and bumped up the marginal California rates on the top 3% of earners.  Greater than $250K to 10.3%.  Greater than $300K to 11.3%.  Greater than $500K to 12.3%.  Greater than a mil to 13.3%.

Today's news from the SacBee is that

Last Thursday, the Secretary of State’s Office announced that a proposal to fund schools by extending the Proposition 30 income tax on the wealthy could begin collecting signatures. While popular with many Democratic politicians, the idea has middling support among California voters, and proponents of the measure – a mix of education and public employee unions – must contend with the fact that Gov. Jerry Brown promised in 2012 that the original tax would be temporary.

But hey, maybe the accelerating migration to Nevada, Texas or Washington is a good thing.  Less traffic.  Less need for high density housing.  Sounds like a plan.  Our friends and neighbors at the CA Teachers Association on Trousdale Dr. are feeling the pressure to lock in some taxes since they are faced with a solid lawsuit (Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association) that would allow teachers who are not in the union to avoid paying a $650 per year "agency fee".  That would put a real dent in the lobbying money that goes into passing Propositions and their extensions.

Friends with Benefits: Prepping for the 2016 Election

The SacBee got out its calculator today and determined that

the latest federal figures show California’s public pension debt in 2013 stood at $4,425 for every man, woman and child in the state, despite strong investment returns by public retirement funds.

The per-capita obligation ranked 11th highest among U.S. states, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of latest data by the U.S. Census Bureau. California’s total pension debt, $610.3 billion, is the largest in the nation.

The Bee also notes that the stats are timely since

Such statistics will likely pour into a complex debate over state and local public retirement benefits in the new few months. The ballot proposal aimed for the November 2016 election would, among other things, change California’s constitution to require that voters approve public pension enhancements. Unions oppose the measure as an attack on working people disguised as voter empowerment.

Now the first week of August is about the least noticed time to alert people to this or any other issue even if we are talking about a $136B shortfall, but since we are talking about 2016 there is plenty of time to fill the airwaves with fear, uncertainty and doubt.

 

Friends with Benefits: School Pension Payout

Our last Friends with Benefits post was seven months ago, but the Mercury News Internal Affairs section (and blog) ran a provocative piece yesterday on school supe pensions that is noteworthy.  Hillsborough made the news because

More than 400 retired educators in the Bay Area received annual pension payouts of $100,000 or more in 2014, according to the budget watchdog group Transparent California.

Three South Bay and Peninsula ex-superintendents received the highest payout among Bay Area educators.  James Smith, former chief of  the Evergreen Elementary District in San Jose, received $287,434; Marilyn Miller, formerly of the four-school Hillsborough district, received $280,035; and Johanna Vandermolen, retired from the Campbell Union Elementary District, received $278,003.

Interestingly, all three of the former elementary school chiefs received more than retired heads of the area’s big school districts, although in some cases only slightly. Last year, in retirement from San Jose Unified, Don Iglesias took in $239,492. He led a district more than 20 times the size of Hillsborough.

The fiscal ramifications were laid out at the end of the piece

Educators are fond of pointing out that CalSTRS is partly funded by salary deductions. But with the pension system’s future obligations outstripping revenues, the state is demanding higher contributions. Teachers will pay somewhat more, but districts’ share will balloon from under 9 percent of teacher and administrator salaries to 19.1 percent in six years. What will take the hit from that? Likely school programs and staffing.

I don't follow the H'borough school system enough to know when Ms. Miller retired, but you do need to keep in mind that it's possible the overall payout included the one-time costs of unused personal time, etc. if she just retired.  If the report of the districts' shares more than doubling over the next six years is accurate, that is a balloon payment no one will want to make.

 

Friends With Benefits: The Risk of Working for Stockton

If you read or watched any news source yesterday you saw the big ruling on the Stockton, CA bankruptcy case involving whether pension benefits (or liabilities) can take precedence over regular municipal debt.  The Times, Daily Post, Daily Journal, Wall Street Journal and Chron all covered the facts but here at the Voice we look ahead to the ramifications, especially for B'game.

The judge was quoted in the County Times saying "California public employeee retirement law....is simply invalid in the face of the supremacy clause of the US Constitution." and he asked "Is CalPERS  a state unto itself?".  Then he answered his own question with a "no" ruling.

The point for fiscally solid cities like B'game is that we need to realize a dollar of pension liability here is worth more than a dollar in places like Stockton or Vallejo or San Jose.  Hence the idea that we need to pay above-market-rate compensation to attract and retain "the best" has some limits.  It is incumbent on city leaders to be able to articulate this--and to not screw it up by doing fiscally irresponsible things.

 

FWB: $12,000+ per citizen

It's hard to believe I haven't posted in our Friends with Benefits category for nine months.  I just came across this fresh new estimate with the various estimated rates of return on the portfolio:

The total state and local government pensions in the United States at the end of 2013 had an estimated $3.6 trillion in assets. They were 74% funded, with liabilities totaling an estimated $4.86 trillion, and an unfunded liability of $1.26 trillion. These funds, in aggregate, project annual returns of 7.75%. If you apply a 6.2% average annual return to recalculate the liability, using formulas provided by Moody’s Investor Services, the liability increases to $5.87 trillion and the unfunded liability increases to $2.27 trillion.

Using the 4.33% discount rate recommended by Moody’s for valuing pension liabilities, the Citibank Pension Liability Index for July 2014, increases the estimated liability to $7.39 trillion and the unfunded liability to $3.79 trillion. That is, if America’s state and local pension funds were to no longer make aggressive market investments but were to return to relatively risk free investments, the payment required just to return these funds to solvency would be more than $12,000 per American.

 

Apparently, Jerry Brown is trying to do something about accrued sick time.  We'll see if it sticks.

Quotable Quote: Chuck Reed

The Wall Street Journal has a very informative interview with Chuck Reed, the mayor of San Jose, in the weekend edition.  I learned a lot about the man and like him even more than I did before reading it.

The piece goes into some detail about his efforts to reign in pension and benefit costs in SJ.  In June of 2012, he "quarterbacked a city ballot initiative to limit pensions for new hires and scale back future benefits for existing workers....It got a big boost from the Bay Area Council, whose executive committee includes the chief executives of Virgin America, the SF Giants and 49ers, Safeway, Webcor and the SF Federal Reserve."

It goes on to discuss how most big businesses tend to stay out of such discussions, but the situation is dire and is starting to suck infrastructure dollars (a recurring theme here at the Voice especially regarding high-cost rail).  Then comes the quotable quote:

"Driving a Tesla over pot-holed roads is no fun."

Good one.  If you have a Journal subscription the whole piece is well worth a reed.

FWB: Calpers' New Approach

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to do a better job analyzing California issues than the local papers.  The October 28 edition had an Opinion piece complementing Calpers on its move to "reference pricing" for its beneficiaries looking for knee replacement surgery.  Without getting into too much detail (and no link since it is behind the paywall)

Calpers was upset after noticing that it paid between $20,000 and $120,000 for the same procedure across the state, without commensurate differences in outcomes.  In January 2010, the retirement organization established a $30,000 reference-price limit on what it would pay. .....by the next year  Half of the high-price hospitals cut their rates, many by a considerable amount.  (Guess which number they were trying to hit).

Maybe there is hope for this state after all.........

FWB: SMUHSD Antes Up

The Daily Journal has a piece on teacher negotiations that notes

Teachers in the San Mateo Union High School District are getting a raise for the second year in a row, which the district says will help offset rising health care costs.  At a meeting Thursday night, the district voted 4-1 to give teachers a 5 percent raise for this school year, costing $2,367,500.

Click through and read the whole piece to get a sense that the SMUHSD Trustees voting was not quite that strongly in favor.  And if I'm reading this Board page correctly, there was one absent or abstaining.

Although Trustee Stephen Rogers voted in favor of the agreement, he takes issue with how the negotiation process is run. He said he couldn’t go into detail, as some of the process took place in closed session.

“Our teachers do a great job,” Rogers said. “My disagreement was with how the process worked. There are a host of things we’ve got to get better on [for negotiations]. I wish the process was different, with some chances on both sides.

I know at least one trustee reads the Voice regularly, so perhaps we can get just a bit more info.