Contra Costa County Schools Hit with Rate Increase to Fund Sanitary District’s $100k+ Pensions
Transparent California was featured in the Contra Costa Times and the OC Register today!
From the Contra Costa Times op-ed, Contra Costa Sanitary District pensions should cover rate increase:
Less than two years after hiking rates to help fund inflated pay packages, the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District is seeking another rate increase, which is expected to hit local schools the hardest. The proposal would increase charges on homeowners by 14.5 percent, and triple the approximately $50,000 fee local high schools currently pay.
When learning of the proposed hikes, Mt. Diablo Unified School District’s executive director of operations, Jeff McDaniel, needed to be “picked up off the floor” according to a report in this paper. County ratepayers may find themselves floored as well, upon realizing just where their money is going.
In 2014, the average pay and benefits package for a full-time, year-round Sanitary District employee was $207,486 — roughly half of which is the employer cost of funding their pension and Rolls-Royce-style health, dental and vision insurance plans that cost as much as $36,868 a year.
The OC Register ran a front-page story, Special pay pads pension checks, which relied heavily on data and analysis from Transparent California:
They’re the little extras tacked on to “pensionable pay” – from mainstays like chunks of unused leave time to such oddities as the “motorcycle bonus” and “confined space pay.”
Add them up, and some public workers in Orange County are boosting their “final average salaries” by some 20 percent, according to an analysis by Transparent California, the data arm of the conservative California Policy Center.
