Heather Fong's Pension: $277,656 Per Year

I am fully in favor of SF declaring bankruptcy so these pensions can be revised, at least the absurd ones like Heather Fong. Next she will be made a commissioner for 100K/year.

Wow

I just looked at the spreadsheet in this article. How do you work as a Transit Operator, isn't that a bus driver? Then get a $9,248 per month pension. I get $5,100 for a 40 hour work week and have a PhD in Electronic Engineering. I will get about $2,300.00 per month pension when I retire at 73 with 20 years.

Wow, I need to learn to drive a bus.

OK

I thought I understood the pension systems. I know that in CalPERS there is a 80% cap on your highest base pay, in one of three formulas, However how is Heather Fong's retirement going to be $277,656 a year?

In her last year she made some were around $180,000 per year. Her last year's income was a little over $500,000, which has been reported as being the results of unused leave and sick leave.

NUTS.

Here is how it works, or is supposed to work in the State. If you have a years worth of sick leave when you retire you get an additional years of service, which means and extra 2 to 3% depending upon your age and job classification, but you are not paid directly for the sick leave.. You are also able to get paid for any leave time on the books that has not been used. However, there is a limit to the number of hours you can keep on the books.

In the State you are not supposed to accumulate more than 680 hours of payable leave. So you should only be able to collect that amount in the last check. However, after talking to some people I have found out that the old rules of Use it or Loss it do not apply.

In the past if you have 680 hours of leave on the books you no longer accrued more leave until you went below the 680 hours. But a law suite keeps the State from not paying for accrued leave. However, it should be the job of the Agency to see that when an employee is at the Max they MUST take leave.

If you allow someone to collect a life time of leave then you are paying for it at their highest rate, most likely. This is just not right either. So it should be monitored by the Controller's Office and published on their Transparency of Government Web Pages so the public sees the hording of Leave time.

That way Heather Fong's final check should not be a surprise. I want to know how she gets a $277,000 retirement for the highest wage year being $180,000? Does the City of San Fransisco calculate pensions on base pay or with all the overtime included and if it does it should not. There also should be a 80% cap just the way the CalPERS retirements are calculated.

I can see why people get mad about the Pensions, but this is not the average Pension. At CalPERS in 2005 the average pension payment per month was just under $1,800 per month. A fare cry from the $22,230 she will get each and every month.

So don't go after everyone for the Crooks at the top. It is the same in Corporate America the Top Brass get the big slice of cake and the workers get the crumbs.

So now we're told to vote to raise taxes--to cover government debt. Hold on a minute...I'm trying to connect the dots.

Gee, why could the state POSSIBLY be going broke?

There needs to be a cap on how much vacation you can carry forward from year to year. That's how the private sector does it. Also, your pension bennies need to be a simple moving average of daily pay over your last 3-5 years of service, not just the last. That's the only way to save California. Otherwise, we're all screwed.