Mailbag: COIN ordinance helps clarify city pension reforms

COIN ordinance helps clarify city pension reforms

I am a fan of transparency and Costa Mesa’s Civic Openness In Negotiation (COIN) ordinance. And it works! Costa Mesa Police Assn.’s tentative 2014-18 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be getting a second hearing at City Council on April 19.

City staff does excellent fiscal analysis, which is reviewed and approved by an outside CPA firm, Lance Soll Lunghard LLP. I was concerned, however, that an actuary had not reviewed the funded and unfunded pension liability numbers; CPAs are not actuaries.

I am glad to report that after meeting with the Finance Advisory Committee, city staff recently obtained validation for the pension numbers from CalPERS’s actuary.

I would like to see the council improve COIN and have an actuary weigh in every time. This MOU’s pension change is complicated — transferring responsibility for making employer-paid member contributions (EPMC) from the city to employees in 3% annual increments over three years to match CalPERS’ 3% overall payroll growth assumption could have been a big impact, but it was not.

It’s encouraging to see progress in police pensions and hiring. Twenty-eight officers have been hired under the new PEPRA 2.7%@57 plan and, in 2017-18, police employees will be contributing 14% of pay, and CalPERS projects the city will be contributing the balance of 54.9%.

Jeff Arthur

Chairman, Costa Mesa Pension Oversight Committee

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Costa Mesa is not so red these days

Re. “Commentary: Sacramento’s policies hurting us in the pocketbook,” (April 1): Wow, Mr. Mayor! I didn’t realize my city was in such horrible shape. Maybe we should all move away since we seem to be overwhelmed by society’s dregs.

No? More like typical conservative, fear-mongering and pessimism is what this sounds like. If things are so bad here in Costa Mesa, Mr. Mayor, because of our state government in Sacramento, maybe instead you should move to one of those thriving red states like Kansas or Louisiana, where the conservative governments there have their states in such fine fiscal order.

No? Didn’t think so.

Mike Aguilar

Costa Mesa