There was a time when San Francisco was fortunate enough to have a healthy and thriving pension investment fund that covered its annual pension contribution tab. The fund had been performing so well that The City even decided in 1996 to begin paying the pension contributions of its employees. Times were good.
For a chart detailing the steadily increasing costs of San Francisco retiree benefits since fiscal year 2001-2002, click on the photo to the right.
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San Francisco taxpayers contributed $104.5 million into city workers’ Social Security accounts this fiscal year, and that cost is expected to grow in the next year. Yet those costs are not factored into two dueling ballot measures meant to address growing retirement costs.
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With San Francisco expected to bust its overtime budget by nearly $40 million, stronger controls are being proposed to rein in costs.
While overtime spending had been on a two-year downward decline, this year the spending will increase by $12 million compared to last fiscal year.
That isn’t sitting well with some supervisors, who are proposing additional overtime restrictions.
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City workers could lose their job protection next week.
As The City struggles to provide basic services, it must close a budget deficit of $384.6 million. The deficit would have been more severe had not labor unions agreed to a two-year union labor give-back deal for the current and next fiscal years valued at about $230 million.
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President Obama has stayed on the sidelines during raging political battles about the role of public employees unions in cash-strapped states, a debate that shows no signs of slowing before the 2012 election and which now has labor leaders pressing for more involvement from the White House on their behalf.
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The Henry Hotel should be shut down. Such places have proven to be havens for drug dealers and users. Instead of releasing videos of the cops doing alleged illegal searches, why doesn’t the hotel owner release videos of all the illegal acts that happen in the hallways of his hotel?I see all the violence and daily crime in this area, and I am disgusted by it. The one time I read that police are doing something to clean up Sixth Street, the officers get reprimanded for it?
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Add Idaho to the list of states moving to end the free lunch fun of public employee unions. On the same day Wisconsin ended many collective bargaining rights of government workers there, Idaho officials moved to limit the process and phase out tenure for unionized teachers.
The measure is part of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna's plan to reform the K-12 education system in Idaho, according to Fox News.
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San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi was among several local and state officials who attended a panel discussion in the city this morning on the problems facing the pension system for public employees.The discussion, hosted by the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored public policy group based in San Francisco, brought together people on both sides of the pension issue, which is causing ballooning budget deficits at both the state and local levels.
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Wisconsin's Senate has been paralyzed on dealing with its budget because it requires a 20-vote quorum to address budget issues. And tied into the governor's budget bill was the provision that caused all of the Democrats in the Senate to flee the state -- a provision limiting collective bargaining rights for state workers to wages only, leaving benefits and work rules for most state employees to be determined by the legislative process instead.
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Once upon a time, public employees made less than private sector workers but were compensated more generously on their pensions to make up the difference. The pension was intended as an incentive to stay on the public payroll as a career, thus insuring a stable workforce able to keep essential daily government services functioning regardless of changes in political leadership.
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