CalPERS Slashes Pension Payments To Retirees In Two More California Towns By Up To 90%

While we've yet to experience any large municipal pension failures, which is just a matter of 'when' rather than 'if', the small pension failures sprinkled across the state of California are starting to pile up. As The Sacremento Bee points out today, public workers in Trinity and Imperial counties are just the latest to have their pensions slashed by up to 90% as their cities admit what most of us have known for some time, namely that they're running ponzi schemes which simply don't have the funding required to payout the benefits they've promised.

Trinity County Waterworks District No. 1 west of Redding and Niland Sanitary District from Imperial County are in line to become the third and fourth government agencies to break with CalPERS over the past 12 months in a manner that shortchanges their retirees.

The CalPERS Board of Administration is scheduled next week to vote on ending contracts with the two small districts because they’re in default.

In Trinity, five current and former employees will see their promised pensions slashed by 70 percent. Niland’s five beneficiaries will see a 92 percent to 100 percent cut in pension benefits, according to CalPERS’ staff reports.

To fully fund their workers’ pensions, the two districts would have to muster up hefty termination fees. CalPERS asks for that money up front, and then moves the separating agency to a low-risk fund called the terminated agency pool.

CalPERS says Niland owes about $200,000 to cover the long-term costs of its employees’ pensions in the terminated agency pool, while Trinity owes some $1.6 million. Trinity has asked CalPERS for a 30-year, no-interest payment plan to cover the termination fee, but the district and the pension fund have not reached a deal, according to CalPERS.

More