What risk is an accountant sitting in SF City Hall taking? High risk positions - sure give them more security. Otherwise, treat them like everyone else. Also, people goto govt jobs because of job security as well - which is also a factor in lower income.

The days where gov workers traded high private sector income for stability and retirement was finaihed sometime in the late 80s, when offshoring, immigration, and massive amounts of productivity started being squeezed from labor to capital.

I live in DC, and at my age many professionals who don't really have any lucrative skills or degrees are now hitting the 6 figure club in late 30s as GS13s. They'd be making less working at some private company without any pension, longer hours, less vacation, and worse benefits, and no guaranteed promotions.

In this town, a lot of people would be more than happy to get a nice office job working for the Federal Government, but it's not that easy anymore unless you're a certain special minority or other who gets pushed to the head of the line.

Other then police and firepeople... what city jobs are high risk? I think most city jobs are paying in the median and giving well above average benefits. it doesn't make sense.

> This is just crazy to me, this public servants takes unprecedented risks and take lower pays so they can take stable retirement.

I didn't realize I was signing up for an "unstable retirement" by working in the private sector.

Perhaps you mean "stable jobs", which indeed was historically supposed to be biggest selling-point of govt jobs, and the trade-off for lower pay. Though now when you count benefits, apparently they get the best total compensation too.

> Now it comes time for due, we don't want to fund these anymore.

The people who agreed to this never wanted to fund them in the first place. If they had, they would have increased taxes or reduced benefits. Instead, we are seeing guaranteed 3% pension increases annually when inflation is <2% and rosy projections about 8% stock market returns when in practice it's more like 5%.

Police, Fire Department, transit workers yes but the vast majority of public servants are not taking "unprecedented risks" when they are at work. They're inspectors, judges, teachers, budget analysts etc.

I saw that a hundred times at a small school district in Southern California. As retirement nears (age 55-59), take a promotion from the classroom to the district office, and a $50-75K pay raise. Three years later, that is the salary used to calculate your pension payments... For life.

I live in a neighborhood with two firefighters who were captains, retired at 50, and make over $100K a year. It's totally unsustainable.

Yep. If they paid out the value of those pensions upon retirement at the cost of a similar annuity and an estimate for the health care costs, people would probably be more angry than they are now, as they don't realize just how generous these are.

To buy an annuity at age 55 worth $100k / year with guaranteed health, dental, long term care, etc. for an employee who's estimated to live another 30 years would cost a few million dollars. A quick Google search shows that the media 401k balance at 55 - 65 in the US is under $75k. The amount of non-guaranteed dividends, cap gains, and withdrawals made to ensure it lasts 30 years would probably not even cover the cost of Obamacare from 55 to 65 when they're eligible for Medicare.

It's one thing to "restructure" the comp package for future employees, and something else to change compensation arrangements retroactively after your employers have upheld their end of the deal.

> where they bump pay 20-30% in their last year to get that pension benefit for the rest of their lives

I've heard this claim many times before. Is there data supporting this or did a handful of people do it and word spreads like it is far more common that actual.

The thing is, this can only happen federally because of the Contracts Clause, and fixing certain states' problems isn't a national issue.

It's great for city workers to make a great wage - just pay for it. Stop pulling shenanigans with pension systems. We just had 11 years of unprecedented growth and pension systems only got worse - expanding benefits and maintaining impossible growth targets.

City and state governments don't pay the bills - that's the problems. Any cuts they make will hurt them in elections, so they just kick the can down the road to the next government.

so why should people in texas pay for the stupid budget decisions of san francisco when they didn’t waste their money?

it’s moral hazard

Consider also that alot of retirees don't stay in Illinois as well. So other states are benefiting from the discretionary spending funded by Illinois taxpayers

Illinois also guarantees a 3% COLA regardless of inflation which leads to a doubling of direct pension benefits within 24 years. Not to mention the pension spiking among many administrators in the last four years of employment. It is criminal.

What about this seems wrong or strange? That seems completely and utterly reasonable to me.

It's amazing that the US Federal government seems to be able to provide trillions of dollars in liquidity on a moment's notice to anyone and everyone - except the states.

Airlines? Of course. Junk bond investors? Sure, why not? States? "We're not going to bail out Democratic-run states."

Many pensions are not the "have $27k/yr starting at age 67" kind, but the "have $100k/yr + benefits starting at age 55" kind. Its the latter that people find upsetting - nothing close to poverty level.

So, I've thought about this a lot and concluded democratic governments (democratic, not Democratic) just can't do this. The incentives to cheat are just too strong. Problem is accounting standards? There's always a legal-by-the-letter-of-the-law way around these rules (loophole) you can find if you work hard enough (just look at Illinois -- "pension ramps", "pension obligation bonds", etc), and even if there's not, most voters won't care enough to dig into the discount rate and other assumptions being used to forecast pension liabilities.

Perhaps our political culture has changed and people used to be more honest, or far-sighted. But, given the world we live in today, especially given the pressure state and local governments are under, I think there really is no other option than a fully-funded 401(k)-style defined contribution plan, to finally force the issue into the open. There are plenty of well-managed 401(k)s and it's the only way to get "cash on the barrelhead" that keeps everyone honest, and doesn't allow the sort of absurd can-kicking so many governments (and their electorates) have favored for the past 30 years.