“Critics of public employee retirement benefits are engaging in hyperbole and pointing to potholes as evidence that millions of elderly Californians should be stripped of their retirement savings.”
Brian Rice, president, Sacramento Area Fire Fighters, Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2015
Brian Rice, president, Sacramento Area Fire Fighters, Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2015
Notwithstanding the possibility that saying pension reformers want to see “millions of elderly Californians stripped of their retirement savings” is itself “hyperbole,” Brian Rice’s recent Sacramento Bee submission requires a detailed rebuttal. Rice’s piece, entitled “Pensions aren’t being paid at expense of filling potholes,” was in response to a study written by Stephen Eide and released by the Manhattan Institute entitled “California Crowd-Out, How Rising Retirement Benefit Costs Threaten Municipal Services,” published in April 2015.
Rice leads off by attempting to link the Manhattan Institute to the supposedly infamous Koch Bros., despite offering zero evidence that the Koch Brothers contribute to that organization. And, of course, he is relying on this unsubstantiated link to discredit Eide’s work, apparently because if the Koch’s funded the work, then the author had to come up with data and conclusions that fit their agenda, instead of the facts and logic.
We’ll get to facts and logic in a moment, but first it is necessary to consider Brian Rice’s agenda. Because there is virtually no comparison between California’s urban firefighters and the “working class,” “minority, low-income and rural communities,” to whom Rice makes reference in his article, and for whom unions are more legitimately challenged to represent. Brian Rice, who retired in 2011 after 28 years of service, collected a pension in 2013 of $183,690, NOT including other benefits which probably add at least another $10,000 to his total retirement package.
Here’s pension data for Brian Rice. Notice how during retirement his pension still increases each year.
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