Governor Poised to Sign Pension Reform Wednesday

With the Governor Jerry Brown poised to sign the pension reform bill in Los Angeles Wednesday, Patch is looking at pension costs in our area.

We’ve focused on five school districts in which Los Altos children attend school for this second story on pensions.

These include Los Altos School District with 160 retirees, Mountain View-Los Altos Unified High School District (MVLA) with 175 retirees, Palo Alto Unified School District, with 473 retirees, Cupertino Union School District with 484 retirees and Fremont Union High School District with 399 retirees. 

Of those five, 67 are members of what reformers call the $100,000 club.

Are such pensions fair or excessive for the level of service, education and accomplishment of public sector managers versus their private sector peers?

And are the $100,000 clubbers representative of ordinary state or local worker?

Of course not. For example, of the 175 MVLA retirees, a dozen are part of the $100,000 club, but 50 MVLA retirees received benefits of less than $20,000 in 2011. And 31 of those 50 received less than $10,000, in monthly payments as low as $162.92.

A fact sheet from CalPERS shows that the average state worker who retired in 2010-2011 will get $3,065 a month.

Is that too much, too little or just right? 

Public attitudes may be influenced by the fact that private sector pensions are becoming rare.

U.S. News & World Reports says just 31 percent of employees have pensions. Unionized employees are far more likely to have pensions.

Among other reforms, the legislation raises the retirement age for most new employees from 55 to 67 to receive full benefits. It also eliminates so-called "double dipping" and caps the pensions of highly paid retired workers.

Critics have said it didn't go far enough. Brown said it was the most that could be gotten at this stage and it isn’t the end of his efforts.

Below are tables of the top 5 in each district whose pensions were  $100,000 in 2011, and how many others there are with pensions over $100,000.

Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District (Top 5 of 12)

Name

Years of Service

2011 Gross Pension

Richard Fisher

38.36

$181,106

Gayle Larson

35.95

$138.375

Linda Sommer

38.4

$127,370

Shoji Wada

40.52

$122,794

Hubert Riddell

37.99

$115,596

Palo Alto Unified School District  (Top 5 of 31)

Name

Years of Service

2011 Gross Pension

Mary Callan

29.8

$229,780

Robert Golton

41.09

$204,457

Gerald Matranga

40.67

$196,747

Marie Scigliano

40.53

$169,523

Linda Common

39.83

$160,889

Fremont Union High School District (Top 5 of 24)

Name

Years of Service

2011 Gross Pension

Paul Cheng

37.76

$197,612

Keet Hamilton

39.79

$180,863

Mary Stone

36.62

$151,999

Ethal Kopal

41.52

$150,068

Richard Amlin

38.16

$145,843

Cupertino Union School District (Top 5 of 22)

Name

Years of Service

2011 Gross Pension

William Bragg

38.25

$178,960

Jones Wong

40.21

$130,909

James Paul

41.2

$129,329

Patricia Vidmar

37.31

$126,977

Marjorie Zellner

36.25

$119,993

Los Altos School District (Top 5 of 9)

Name

Years of Service

2011 Gross Pension

Timothy Justus

38.49

$206,114

Margaret Gratiot

36.74

$179,335

Patricia Weisman

36.33

$152,324

David McNulty

41.33

$132,245

Richard Liewer

36.87

$130,367

—Patch Editor Tom Abate contributed to this report