Even as the American economy is humming, many states and cities are still hurting from the 2008 financial meltdown. The crash hammered their pension funds and tax revenues, but didn’t reduce the amounts they owe retirees.
Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension.
It is $76,111.
Per month.
That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.
Oregon — like many other states and cities, including New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut — is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making. Its economy is growing, but the cost of its state-run pension system is growing faster. More government workers are retiring, including more than 2,000, like Dr. Robertson, who get pensions exceeding $100,000 a year.
Costs are rising even in places that previously acted to defuse the problem. Colorado trimmed pensions in 2010, but a new $32 billion shortfall means more pension cuts and tax increases are likely. Detroit sliced its pension obligations in bankruptcy and persuaded philanthropists to chip in, but it is not clear that the city has an affordable plan.
In San Francisco, the school board wants voters to approve a $298 “parcel tax” on real estate, ostensibly to raise $50 million to pay teachers a living wage.
Oregon is a blue state, but in its restive red hinterlands, tax increases are politically off limits and financial distress has been severe since 1994, when logging was curtailed to save an endangered owl. Lately, things have been getting even worse.
When a man was reported yelling and firing his gun on the property of a school in rural Josephine County, it took two hours for a sheriff’s deputy to arrive, said Kate Dwyer, chairwoman of the board for the Three Rivers School District.
The county has cut sheriff patrols, closed its mental health department and kept its jail at less than half capacity because of a lack of guards.
Dave Valenzuela, the Three Rivers school superintendent, traces the latest woes directly to PERS. The system is run at the state level, but it is bankrolled in large part by obligatory contributions from local governments.
Отсюда
В некоторых случаях американские пенсионеры (сразу оговорюсь - ничтожная прослойка, но тем не менее) получают какие-то запредельные пенсии из местных бюджетов. В данном примере указан Орегон, где бывший хирург муниципальной больницы получает 76 ТЫСЯЧ баксов В МЕСЯЦ. Это сильно больше, чем средняя орегонская семья с двумя работающими взрослыми зарабатывает в год. И теперь экономить приходится на ремонте мостов, дорог, содержании полиции, зарплатах учителям и так далее. Вот в Сан Франциско даже пришлось поднимать налоги, что бы оплатить зарплаты учителям, а пенсии бывшим государственным работникам все равно становятся неподъемными. Кое-где пенсии все-таки урезаются, как в Детройте по результатам муниципального банкротства, но в большинстве случаев это бъет как раз по нижнему слою получателей пенсий, а вот всякие бывшие депутаты и прочие бездельники (в статье приведена так же пенсия бывшего футбольного тренера университетской команды Орегона) продолжают получать сотни тысяч в год.