San Diego’s beleaguered Mayor Bob “Headlock” Filner refuses to resign. This intransigence baffles and enrages many San Diegans.
Aside from the fact that Bob Filner is an arrogant, power-mad, sex-crazed, narcissistic megalomaniac, there are three practical reasons why he may well want to stay in office as long as possible. Two are fairly well known — but one is not. The article below details that third reason.
Here’s the three reasons as I see it:
1. The first reason is so obvious it’s seldom mentioned. Each month he remains in office, he grosses $7,839.50 as mayor. When he quits, is recalled or is convicted of a felony, that cash flow ends. Meanwhile Gloria Allred will be coming after everything he has.
2. Staying in office might serve as a bargaining chip with prosecutors. Should investigations (such as SunRoad) lead to actual criminal charges filed against Filner, he might offer to resign in exchange for prosecutors dropping their charges. Without that bargaining chip, prosecutors have little incentive to drop their charges (if filed).
3. This last reason (all but totally ignored up until now) has been on my mind for some time. Apparently VOICE reporter Liam Dillon has run the facts to ground. The issue is — How does Filner staying or leaving office affect his city pension? The answer is complicated, but it’s a significant difference.
Apparently if Filner can stay a FULL year in office, then his mayoral salary becomes his highest annual salary — off which the pension calculation is made. Remember, Filner already has served over five years in his previous capacity as city staffer and city council critter.
Before he was elected mayor, Filner was entitled to a modest $8,700 city pension, which he has never drawn (he has two other government pensions, detailed in the article below) — plus he’s well qualified for Social Security (yes, Congressmen DO pay into Social Security). If Filner stays a year in office, his city pension jumps to about $21,000 — a 141% increase in his city pension.
There are other (less likely) scenarios discussed in the article. Also, I must caution that this pension situation is very tricky territory — even the city retirement bureaucrats seem unsure of their numbers and conclusions. Also, it’s not clear to me what happens if the mayor “”retires” DURING his first year. I doubt the city retirement mavens know either.
At any rate, we all now have a better understand why Bob Filner wants to stay in office (assuming he’s still functions with some semblance of rational thought — admittedly an iffy assumption).
From Voice…
Filner’s Pension Incentive: $20K
http://voiceofsandiego.org/2013/08/01/filners-pension-incentive-20k/
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s pension is creeping higher as he remains in office.
We examined the mayor’s potential pension payout during the campaign, and decided to take another look given the current sexual harassment scandal and calls for his resignation.
The mayor’s financial incentive to stay for a full four-year term is around $20,000 a year in city pension payouts.
To read the rest of this article, go to the link.
Comments 6
Why does the public allow these recycled politicians to collect multiple pensions well before retirement age? Bilbray was collecting 2 while still a Congressman, Peters is collecting 1 now as a sitting Congressman. Who approves this crap?
Where else does this kind of pension collecting, spiking go on, other than in the “go along to get along” political class?
The military.
Author
Oh DAMN! Hypocrisy makes a good point. I HATE it when that happens!
But we agree on this issue. If you worked for three employers for 10 years each, you could very well get three pensions (if we count 401k plans as pensions — which they are — just not guaranteed as to payout). Nothing wrong with that.
The problem is not multiple pensions, it’s the FORMULA for the pensions, including (but not limited to)
1. How much (or little) the employee has to pay vs. the benefit provided.
2. How early the pension starts paying out.
3. How the survivor benefit is calculated.
4. Whether or not it has COL protection, and — most of all —
5. Whether or not the taxpayer is on the hook, guaranteeing such pensions.
Hypocrisy,
There is no spiking in the military. I do not believe that anyone gets more in retirement than they made while serving.
There are all kinds of city workers who collect more in retirement than they made while working.
I will agree that too much “inside baseball” goes on within the bureaucratic class (including the military) and for that reason, I oppose double and triple dipping of public sector pensions. Can we agree on that?
John,
If by double dipping, you mean earning more than one pension and then collecting all of them at retirement, then no, we do not agree. If however, you mean collecting a pension while still working full time in the same line of work, then yes, we do agree. No one should have a full time government job while collecting a government pension.
I also agree that spiking is a problem, but it also has a simple solution. Instead of basing a pension on highest year’s (or even an average of the highest three years) salary, let each year worked stand on its own. If the formula calls for three percent and I earn $20K in my first year, I also earned a pension of $600 per year assuming I eventually vest. If my final year salary is $100K, then my eventual pension is increased by $3,000 per year, but it doesn’t increase what I earned from previous years.
“I do not believe that anyone gets more in retirement than they made while serving.”
There are some retirees, in their 70’s, who are earning more today than they did when they served, John due to COLAs.
That’s a who different problem though–planned theft of benefits by the Federal Reserve Bank