Miami Hides Stunning Government Pension Payments from Taxpayers

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MIAMI—Taxpayers United of America (TUA) released estimated pension payouts for Miami and Dade County government employees as well as Miami-Dade government teachers. Florida refuses to release actual government pensions, ignoring citizens’ right to review all payments funded by taxes. TUA calculated estimated pensions for government employees based on actual salaries of current government employees to shed light on the largess of the tightly guarded secret payouts.
“Florida lawmakers have been trying to undo the damage of administrations past, that have made crushing deals with union bosses whose only concern is their own job security,” stated Rae Ann McNeilly, Director of Outreach for TUA.
“But despite efforts to reform the pension system, it seems that government officials are still willing to protect the system by keeping it hidden from review. The costs of shielding the system from review, and ultimately, reform, are devastatingly high as cities around the country are buckling under the weight of their unfunded liabilities. Pension funds are the number one budgetary problem in the country and Florida is no different.”
“While residents across Florida face crushing taxes, falling home values, high unemployment, and, at least according to some, another recession, government employees continue to receive stunning pensions funded by taxpayers who will never collect more than about $22,000 a year from Social Security.”
“As long as Florida shields its pension payments from taxpayer review and uses grossly overstated actuarial calculations, the Florida pension system remains a ticking time bomb. The purpose of our study is to put some perspective around individual pensions, to put them in terms to which the average taxpayer can relate.”
McNeilly continued, “For example, Robert Cuevas, Jr., county attorney, stands to collect an estimated annual pension of $198,472* based on his actual annual gross of $354,415. His estimated lifetime pension payout could be a staggering $6,440,421.*”
Stephen Hunt, a fire lieutenant, has an estimated annual pension of $202,989*, based on his actual annual gross of $202,989, with an estimated lifetime payout of $6,586,984.*
“Miami-Dade County government teacher, Sergio Cartas, has a lifetime estimated payout of $5,474,290* with an estimated annual pension of $168,699*, based on his actual annual gross of $301,249.”
View pension amounts below:

“Florida’s government pension systems are crushing middle class Floridians. Replacing defined benefit pensions for all new government hires with social security and 401(k)s would eventually eliminate unfunded government pensions. Current government employees must consider a voluntary pension contribution of up to 10% to preserve their pension benefits. Additionally, all members should pay for 50% of their healthcare premiums. We need a stable system that is fair to both taxpayers and beneficiaries or pension checks will stop coming,” added McNeilly.
*TUA submits FOIA requests for current employee salaries and estimates pensions based on the current pension laws. COLA average of 3% per year worked, uses 23 years of pension payments based on IRS form 590 LE of 85. Assumes employee worked 35 years and retired at age 62. No personal information is provided so calculations are accurate based on the necessary assumptions.

Daily Herald | Suburban police sweeps fall short of grant expectations

Jim Tobin, President of Taxpayers United of America, was quoted in a Daily Herald article on 4th of July federal grants.
Algonquin police received $8,617 in federal grants last year to beef up patrols for drunken drivers and seat belt scofflaws in the two weeks leading up to the Fourth of July holiday.
Despite the extra effort, the additional patrols netted no impaired drivers — and they weren’t the only department to come up empty.
Seven other suburban law enforcement agencies — Cook County sheriff’s, Crystal Lake, Crystal Lake Park District, Elk Grove Village, Kildeer, West Chicago and West Dundee — received a combined $13,046 for increased enforcement that resulted in no drunken driving arrests.
Twenty-eight of the 41 suburban police agencies receiving funds also fell short of seat belt ticketing goals during the same pre-Fourth of July period, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation, which hands out the federal funds.
Despite the lackluster results, those agencies were still eligible to receive more grant funds this year, IDOT officials said.
“That doesn’t mean that the amount requested wasn’t reduced,” said Guy Tridgell, an IDOT spokesman. “The chief reason for that would be past performance.”
Tridgell said the Sustained Traffic Enforcement Program grants funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are parsed out to police agencies in 23 counties that are home to 85 percent of the state’s population and where two-thirds of traffic fatalities occur.
IDOT’s specifications suggest police use the funds to make one DUI arrest for every 10 hours of patrol and write occupant-restraint violations amounting to 30 percent of all citations.
In all, 33 of the 41 suburban agencies studied did combine to make 151 drunken-driving arrests during last year’s Fourth of July enforcement period.
Yet, government accountability groups say the program doesn’t adequately track results and requires minimal reporting on spending.
The legal outcome of the drunken driving arrests is unknown. Neither the state nor federal government requires police departments to follow those cases through the court system for reporting purposes, and many police officials said they don’t track that information independently. Few departments have goals for the officers working the extra shifts beyond the state’s recommendations.
“It’s certainly an admirable goal to reduce the number of DUIs. However, we always need to be looking at taxpayer-funded programs to make sure they’re actually functioning as they’re intended,” said David From, Illinois state director at Americans for Prosperity, a Virginia-based government-spending watchdog organization. “It’s important to determine if these programs are being funded through inertia rather than producing real results.”
Sgt. Jeff Sutrick oversees Algonquin’s traffic grant program. He said the department requested just $5,100 for its Fourth of July enforcement campaign this year, partly because of last year’s results.
“We’ve been a lot more successful in our seat belt enforcement than with DUI,” Sutrick said. “Other departments can utilize the funds, then. It also depends on how many hours we think we can fill with our staffing.”
The grants pay the overtime costs to patrol officers who volunteer to work the additional shifts. The shifts generally run Thursdays through Sundays from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Sutrick noted that the grants don’t cover the costs associated with court appearances officers are required to make with many drunken driving arrests. These grant funds are generally available for major holidays like New Year’s and Fourth of July or national events associated with increased alcohol use like the Super Bowl and St. Patrick’s Day.
Records indicate most of the tickets issued during these increased enforcement periods are for other traffic offenses rather than impaired driving or seat belt violations, which are the focus of the campaigns. Last year during the Fourth of July period, 69 percent of the citations the 41 participating suburban agencies issued were for offenses other than drunken driving or seat belt violations, according to IDOT records.
Advocates for the grant program believe any effort to make the roads safe from drunken driving is a worthy endeavor.
“One way to look at these numbers is that once the word goes out that there’s increased patrols out there, maybe there’s less people drinking and driving,” said Rita Kreslin, deputy director of the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists. “When you talk to a crash victim, one crash from a drunk driver is one too many.”
But anti-tax groups say the federal government is making broad-based spending decisions with little input from taxpayers.
“If it’s such a problem, then the towns should hire more cops to hand out DUIs,” said Jim Tobin, president of Chicago-based Taxpayers United of America, a group that fights tax hike measures throughout the country. “Let voters decide locally if they want to fund this sort of thing.”