Retired public employees are raking in annual pensions upwards of $200,000 -- and they're not in unions.
It's primarily "nonunion bosses" who share the rarefied air at the top of the pension ladder, according to the Bay Area News Group. The "fattest of the six-figure pensions guaranteed by California taxpayers" go to a former San Joaquin County superintendent of schools and a fire chief in San Ramon Valley, both of whom take home more than $295,000 a year.
On Friday, California lawmakers will vote to restrict access to this posh club, saying yea or nay to a plan crafted by Gov. Jerry Brown to "stop the club from growing in the future," the newspaper reported.
Another superintendent, Christine Lim, began taking home $244,000 a year after the school board terminated her contract in 2010, the newspaper reported -- a bigger payout than she ever received while working.
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"When people can make more in retirement than when they were employed, that's a problem," board member Mike Katz-Lacabe told the newspaper.
Just 66 retirees make more than $15 million a year, the newspaper reported. One man, Bruce Melkenhorst, the retired city manager of Vernon, in Los Angeles County, takes home $526,000 every year.
Brown's plan would cap new employees' pensions at $110,100 for most employees, and at $132,120 for employees, like teachers, who do not pay into Social Security, the newspaper reported. But the pension cap would only affect government workers hired after Jan. 1, meaning the current crop of "eye-popping pensions" is here to stay -- for "decades," the newspaper reported.
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