The California Supreme Court has turned down the Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger administration's appeal of a $200 million interest payment owed to the state teachers' pension fund.
Faced with a looming $10 billion budget gap, the administration sought to lower the interest obligation ordered by a state appellate court.
California State Teachers' Retirement System successfully sued to recover $500 million the state withheld four years in a budget-cutting move by lawmakers and then-Gov. Gray Davis. The original ruling came in 2005 and the appellate court this summer upheld it.
In September, the state repaid the half-billion dollars, which is earmarked for a special supplemental fund for 63,000 older retired schoolteachers, who use the benefits to protect their pensions against inflation. But the administration challenged the interest rate set by an appellate court, hoping it would be reduced.
I agree with this online comment to that news article:
Yes the state is in trouble, and no I'm not a teacher, but right is right and wrong is wrong. The state should have to pay the teachers pension fund back.
Also note this comment:
The teachers' fund is made up of deductions from the teachers' paychecks. The money is invested in various high risk and low risk investments. The money from those gains flow into the pot. It's not a pot of money funded by tax payers.
I pay a higher percentage of my pay into this fund than people pay into social security.
Learn from the countless mistakes made with the Texas Retirement System, which is only accurate in that it is in Texas. It's too disorganized to be a system, it's inadequate as a form of viable retirement income but it is in Texas. The benefits and the pension that Texas teachers receive is balanced largely on the money taken from working teachers right now, which is diminishing rapidly. And thanks to the stupid decision that cuts teachers' access to social security money that we have earned through other jobs in our lives, we are royally screwed. I figure that I will probably end up dying in some classroom trying to convince a kid that Picasso didn't paint Whistler's Mother.
ReplyDelete