October 31, 2008
And you thought New York was bad...
From today's Wall Street Journal story about the quickly-going-bankrupt city of Vallejo, California:
After Sept. 11, California municipalities moved to increase wages and benefits to attract police officers and firefighters. Vallejo joined a consortium of cities in the region, including Oakland and San Francisco, that used each city's salary and benefit increases as a guide for labor contracts.
Before that, in 1999, state lawmakers had adopted a measure called "3% at 50" that allowed local and state police officers and firefighters to retire at 50 years of age with 3% of their highest annual salary -- multiplied by the number of years served. The legislation granted thousands of public-safety workers a retirement payout of 90% of their former salaries for life. The benefit, bolstered by post-9/11 recruiting, swiftly became a major staple for most California cities.
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