those pensions or how those pensions typically the government employee pensions got wiped out by wall street. ok that's a good set of questions when we talk about these kinds of tensions there are called defined benefit pension plans which means you get a certain amount of money when you retire for the rest of your life and you can even get a kind of a rider on it works for the rest of your spouse's rest of his or her life so it's it provides a great like social security it provides a great deal of security it's not like before a one k. when your money runs out it runs out the average forty four one k. has forty five thousand dollars it how long can you live in american society of forty five thousand and forty percent of people. for one case. that averages ten thousand dollars so it's prophetically small you can outlive it in a hurry. it used to be common understanding that you needed to pensions to to survive in your old age you got one with social security and the other one was from your employer which was mostly a private employer and during the fifty's and sixty's pensions became

that the average public pension in california is only $26,000. which certainly here in the bay area is not exorbitant by any stretch of the imagination. they launched a website, a don't scapegoat us.com website, aimed at legislators, and as well as at those that they perceive as being behind the effort to rein in public pensions at the expense of workers. to that end, there was a study released this week by an organization called the california foundation for fiscal responsibility, which is funded by an out of state billionaire that it won't actually name. but what it basically found is that california's state and local government workers are making salaries similar to those in the private sector, but get significantly higher retirement benefits. with the exception of teachers, though. that teachers are actually making a lot less after retirement than other public employees in the state. so that sort of lit a fire under the rhetoric, as well. and now today we have had the legislative analysts' office just release a -- analysis of a ballot measure

pension his number one priority. he went to the ballot last year. it looked like for a long time it was going to pass. then the unions as well as most of the city officials said this was a terrible idea. it was sunk at the ballot. pretty resoundingly. he's trying to gather signatures to put another measure on the ballot which he says will save substantially more money than mayor lee's proposal. in fact, the mayor is looking at his proposal would save about $60 million in the first year. ad adachi is saying his will save $1 million to $140 million. if that does pass there's a good chance there's going to be litigation over that. >> why do they think it's going to pass now if it didn't happen before? >> it matters how angry the people are. the mayor is going to unveil his proposed budget by june 1st. a lot of getting the pension deal this time with the unions have a lot to do with what the budget's going to like like. are there going to be layoffs? are there going to be service cuts? in fact, the largest sitting employ

it's a question of pensions and all of the mechanics of how you manage pensions and question of health care and how you manage health care for them. my understanding is we have hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded liability on health care. i don't know how many billions or tens of billions the unfunded liability son pensions. i don't know what our earnings assumption is. it's probably not very realistic. so the question is, you are working on an effort to to do this. jeff got slaughtered by the establishment when he tried to do it. what is different than what you're trying to do? is it greater awareness. anything the citizens of the city can do to help you get this over the hump? you got the full scope of employees. are we dealing with fire and police as well as bus drivers, people in parks and rec? can you put a little bit of flesh on the bones on what you intend to do with pensions and how the public can help you get there. >> let me just say that obviously pension reform is one of the biggest topics in city hall right now and something i think we're all focused on, not only o

one is pensions. the problems with both cities public pension funds. if anything, oakland's problem seems the more urgent in that you have a very large payment due in a few months that relates really to previous pension liabilities that have gotten kicked down the road quite a long time ago. how are you going to deal with it? >> what they are talking about is a police retirement fund that was founded in the 1950's, and apparently, it ran out of money within the decade, and they tried to fix it in the late 1950's and the late 1970's, and now, i have a $43 million payment coming down the road. i did recommend a compromise, that we bond out on some of the excess equity we have now, and start paying it down. so i am recommending a combination. we are in the middle of the worst recession of our lifetime. just paid at all of is not acceptable. there is no way you could make a $90 million cut this year to just pay. we actually did long-term studies that it is cheaper for the cities to bond off and make some annual payments than it would be to just start payin

that's the pension that everybody gets and on top of that they say he will not be eligible for sixty to seventy percent of his annual salary on an ongoing basis in future years. and what do you think i mean business is business right so perhaps what you do in your personal life shouldn't affect whatever was in your contract and it's understandable that he still hasn't been convicted of anything this is all still alleged but at the same time if you're the chief of the i am that you you know how a little problem with wanting to heal up and try to sexually assault women should you still get the payout and all of that especially when you have europe like teetering on the brink of the edge i just feel like we're all a little trigger happy here i don't know why we're having this discussion he has not been you know well he hasn't been convicted of raping anyone yet you know he's not guilty yet so why are we making judgments oh you're going to pay this rate this this much money we don't know that these are great it's you know that's that's what people do. which is a good thing altogether i k

we have a very dignified pension system. because of the way the stock markets have acted, in particular the crash in 2008, you're not prepared for the costs have risen as high as they are. of the $306 million deficit, $100 million of that has been the result of an increase in cost to our attention. that is why i am working very hard to do pension reform. i think we're getting closer and closer to negotiating a with our labor union leaders and our city family to have something before you that will really take a long-term solution to the pension costs. and make sure in the future that it doesn't eat into the general fund the way it has and the way it will. if we don't take care of it this year, in three years, the extra areas of our city will be rising to over $600 million. that will be eating into all the services that you want, the ability to have levels that we have today. a solvent city is the most important thing i can contribute. we need to make sure that we balance the budget and we have had to reform for you in a most

. --- limita las contribucione s de la ciudad a los fondos de pension a un 9 por ciento.ad para que los empleados jubilados puedan recibir el monto total de sus pensiones. ---y tambien aumenta a 20 aÑos, el tiempo que una persona jubilada debe haber laborado para poder gozar de beneficios de salud al jubilarse. cu - calls tease ---es justo que a los trabajadores municipales se les reduzca el monto de sus pensiones para aliviar esa crisis? ---llamenos gratis con su opinion al 1-866-229-4848 ...escribanos a en facebook, somos: telemundo san jose. cu ---san francisco podria llevarse otro reconocimiento nacional, pero este seria negativo. take vo ---maÑana martes la junta directiva de la agencia del tranporte municipal decidir si aprobarn un incremento a los pasajes de taxis que opran en la ciudad. ---bajo la propuesta, el servicio aumentaria 10 centavos, a un total de 55 centavos por cada milla. ---el tiempo de espera tambien aumentaria 10 centavos a un monto total de 55 centavos por cada minuto de espera. ---ademas, se agregaran toda una serie de recargos adicionales que ha

>> that is a separate part from the pension. we have to balance -- we have to have a pension system that pays for itself. we will work on the plan and presented. i predict may be to a half weeks at the most before we have something in front of the board of supervisors to get the ball rolling. salaries are always being reviewed. we have to have the careful balance between excessive salaries and salaries that will attract the best talent, as well as salaries that provide a living wage for city workers. it is an expensive city. i get paid a lot more than others. i want to make sure that those who work for me are satisfied that they can take care of their personal business with a decent salary and pension as they put the years in. >> another reminder that you are listening to the commonwealth of california radio program. we're talking with ed lee, mayor of san francisco. you mentioned the america's cup is coming. it is coming to san francisco in 2013. it is expected to bring over $1 billion of economic benefit to the city. in exchan

i want to voice my opinion about pensions. i am concerned about eliminating what affects profit sharing. this will seriously impact city retirees. it will also impactth

that is where i am working on the pension. we want to solve the budget. third thing is, i want the city to be successful. what brought you all here to san francisco? diversity, strong neighborhoods, the events that we sponsor every day, the neighborhood small businesses that we have. that is what has made us a successful city. i want the city to continue to be successful, to continue to attract the thousands of visitors that come every day to see us, be at our local shops. i want the city to be safe, solvent, and successful. that is the principle upon which i shared with the department heads, with commission directors, as we approach this daunting task as we fill in this gap. but there will be some hard decisions in front of us. there will be some programs that we are reviewing today with you that have to change the way they practice. there will be departments experiencing less in how they do their jobs, but will still be held accountable for doing the best job possible. i want to thank my colleagues from all the different departments because they are all

pension money. anyway, we didn't like that bank because they weren't giving us a great return, and we were going to move it anyway. the book takes me on a journey from providence to a lot of interesting places. the next part of the book talks about what happens during plunder dome, what happened during the trial, and what happened in prison and what happened when i came out of prison. a lot of it that -- has to do with the redevelopment of the city. i was indicted with 27 charges in found guilty of one, conspiracy to commit rico. and it was really conspiracy to commit a crime i was found not guilty of. and go figure. i took an appeal. that was a great dissenting opinions, but they don't reverse cases. it was 2-1. i'll always maintain any innocence. never took a dime from any developer or anything like that, and not caught up in a whole situation, and by the way in politics today? in the city of providence, the state of rhode island, the city of philadelphia, i don't care, when you got 6, 8, 9,000 pe

as you heard earlier, i'm working very hard on pension reform. that's one of my very important issues that we're working with. many people in the city right now. we'll be presenting to the behind from the mayor's office a proposal in the next two weeks. yes, we're going to end up having new hires pay a lot more into the pension system, part of the proposal, but every way that we looked we could not figure out how to balance that pension system without having current employees pay more into the system. so it cannot be just the full burden than on new hires. new hires will end up having to pay a lot more, and they will not have the same system as we have today. that's for sure. we have to have additional contributions from the employees of the city. we'll be forwarding that pension proposal to the board and hopefully in the next few weeks proposing it in public, and introducing it as a ballot measure for november. >> i look forward to supporting that. this is work the mayor and many representatives, both from labor and the city department, have bee

the pension question is something that comes up. the cost of our pension liability will cost the city, especially because of our investments in the market have come down since 2008. we are spending more of our general fund to pay our pension costs. that is a big challenge. it is a long-term problem, but it also has short-term implications. we know right away we are not going to have the enough money as we need to cover our services and pension costs as well. i support efforts to figure out short-term solutions around contributions that workers can make. it is important to work collaborative way, as much as possible with labor, organizations, to come up with solutions. we have to figure out, jobs are at stake. we have to cut positions, services. if we do not resolve the pension issue, we will have to cut services in a way that will be harmful to san franciscans. fewer options for muni, parks deteriorating, less investment in public infrastructure, if we cannot resolve these issues. the tide is rising. we need to figure out how to swi