I was glad to have a response to my last letter to the editor, regarding the effect salary increases and new positions have on our pension deficit, which is the worst problem facing the city of Chico right now. Michele Jordan asked, “what can we do to fix this problem?”
City Council has made the contracts with the employees behind closed doors, with no input from the public, here’s what they can do to fix it – ask employees, particularly management, to pay their own pension deficit, now, and in future.
Transparent California is a website that provides “comprehensive and easily searchable information on the compensation of public employees and retirees in California”.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2023/chico/
It’s provided by the Nevada Policy Institute, a “private non-profit, free-market and limited-government policy research organization based in Las Vegas, Nevada. ” Here’s more information from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Policy
TC provides information gathered from California public agencies, including the city of Chico, Butte County, and the Chico Recreation District. I have cross-referenced this site with the California Secretary of State’s publicpay.gov site, as well as information I’ve gathered from the City of Chico, and it’s reliable and accurate. So I believe TC is correct in their estimation of each employee’s personal pension deficit, using their salary, their expected pay-out at retirement, years served, and their personal share of the cost. I was shocked to find that some of these people have a personal debt equal to some people’s entire salary, more than the median income of our city.
Mark Sorensen, for example, as of 2023, had a base salary of $205,823, (total $213,079 including “other pay”), and a benefits package of $46,282, for a total compensation of $340,441. With previous years of service, his personal pension deficit, as of 2023, was $81,079. I don’t mean to be petty, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask this man to write a check for $81,079, it’s the right thing to do.
Mark SorensenCity ManagerChico, 2023 | $205,823.08 | $0.00 | $7,256.06 | $213,079.14 | $46,282.90 | $81,079.82 | $340,441.86 |
So I wrote a letter to the editor about it, I hope other people will chime in. I don’t think people realize the situation the city is in, or why.
Michelle Jordan asked what we could do to fix our pension dilemma. For years now, consultants have told our city leaders that the pension deficit, created by a management top-heavy staff that pays unrealistic shares toward their very generous pensions and benefits, is the biggest problem facing the city of Chico. The pension deficit undermines the budget, siphoning money away from infrastructure and other public needs. Former city manager Mark Orme and his assistant Chris Constantin admitted that the city had been deferring maintenance of roads, sewer, and other critical infrastructure in favor of paying CalPERS costs. At the same time, new positions have added to the cost, even with increasing annual “catchup” “payments – this year’s payment budgeted at $18,000,000.
What can be done? Here’s my simple solution – ask employees, especially management, to write a check to cover their personal pension deficit.
Transparent California, a non-profit public research agency, collects employee salary and benefits figures from public agencies all over California. Using base salary, years of service, and CalPERS contribution, TC figures the individual’s personal pension deficit. Our city manager, for example, has racked up an $81,079.82 deficit as of 2023. Given a salary of over $200,000/year, why couldn’t he just write a check to pay his own deficit? If all the top management and public safety employees paid their own deficit, we could even talk about getting out of CalPERS.
Why should the burden be on the taxpayers?
Juanita Sumner, Chico CA
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Leave a comment