Judge Tells OCERS To Release Names and Pensions
Those interested in Orange County government accountability and pension reform won a legal battle Wednesday.
In a ruling over a petition filed by the California Foundation For Fiscal Responsibility vs. the Orange County Employees Retirement System (OCERS), the Superior Court of Orange County ordered the OCERS to disclose “…gross amount paid to the payee member, the name of the payee, and the identification of the prior public employer of the named payee and no other information contained in the records OCRES.”
The presiding judge, Hon. Luis Rodriguez, says in his ruling, “Individuals must have access to government files to hold governments accountable for their actions. Personal embarrassment is outweighed by the strong public policy supporting transparency in government and the strong public interest in knowing how it spends its money ‘to expose corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, prejudice and favoritism.’”
This ruling is consistent with the premise that government can only be held accountable when there is transparency. Without transparency, corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, prejudice and favoritism cannot be identified, much less routed out.
Think you were outraged at OCERS refusal to disclose the information? just wait to see how much the Orange County Employees are making. Then you will really get pissed.
Attorney Bernie – the amount of individual retirement payments has been available on the OCERS web site for months that I know of, so anyone wanting to see how much retirees are being paid can go there now to read the list.
Let’s find out how much Chris Norby’s haul is. That will be eye opening.
I would think that if Norby is drawing a public sector pension it would be from the State Teachers Retirement fund. Of course, this wold make him a double-dipper, someting he has claimed that he is opposed to.
Although OCERS is a public agency, its sole purpose was established by Orange County voters in a free and fair election to provide public pensions for government workers.
And, what is not reported in the coverage, is that employees pay into the pension fund. In fact, OCERS’ investments pulled in $1.3 billion in 2009 to pay for these pensions. Taxpayers are not on the hook. However, Social Security loses money and pays out more than it brings in.
That’s the biggest lie I’ve seen all week.