From Bill Kaempffer, public safety spokesman:
Bridgeport Firefighters responded to a significant house fire at about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday. No serious injuries were reported. The fire happened at 951-953-959 Capitol Ave. in a three-story, three-family house.
Assistant Fire Chief Ivan Fossesigurani said firefighters leaving the station on Congress Street could see smoke in the distance and, on arrival, encountered heavy fire coming from the second and third floors. He estimated the flames were shooting more than 25 feet into the air.
Four fire engines, two ladder trucks and an assistant and deputy chief responded. An additional ladder and engine were staged in case additional resources were needed.
Firefighters learned that all occupants had escaped the house but conducted primary and secondary searches of the interior to make certain. An hour after the fire was first reported, firefighters continued to look for hotspots and hidden fire.
The home, Fossesigurani said, had at some point been renovated, created hidden voids that firefighters had to locate and extinguish any fire.
The American Red Cross responded. An estimated eight people were displaced, including six adults and two children.
And there some on OIB who want to cut or take their pension away from them when they retire, that’s sad.
And there are others, including me, who wish to know how the pensions are adequately funded so as not to create promises busted from neglect.
Ron, why aren’t you raising your voice regarding the handling of Pension A funds and their adequacy to meet the needs of former firefighters or their surviving spouses?
And aren’t you interested in the public funding of how additional earnings from overtime will affect currently working formerly Plan B, now CT MERF future retirees? When police and/or fire can use current OT to increase retirement income significantly, should the taxpayers know about it? Perhaps you can tell us what happened in 2012, as far as you know. Time will tell.
AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld
“America’s Retirement Crisis Grows as Cities Raid Pension and Health Plans”
Detroit and Illinois aren’t the only ones stealing earned benefits.
December 10, 2013
Across America, states, counties and cities are taking steps that will make retirement for ex-public employees much harsher. Courts, politicians and corporations are all working together to chip away at deferred wages: reducing pensions or eliminating promised healthcare, or both. Said simply, they’re looting retirements and pushing people toward poverty.
This is the course unfolding in federal bankruptcy court for the city of Detroit. It is what the Illinois Legislature passed last week in a giant pension reform bill that excluded the city of Chicago, whose red ink reckoning comes next year. It’s what’s before California cities that have filed for bankruptcy, or are seeking voter approval to cut into retirement benefits, such as Stockton, San Bernardino, Riverside and even wealthy San Jose.
In these and other government jurisdictions, the foremost question is not why legions of elected officials have failed to provide for the employees who did their jobs and made the cities function. Instead, the question seems to be how much they can plunder earned and pledged benefits, so they can avoid raising taxes or cutting services.
“News leaking out this week from the Motor City tells how the enormous gap between pensions workers earned and the money set aside to pay for them will be closed,” wrote David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. “By stealing from workers.”
The plundering of private sector pensions by corporate executives is nothing new. Books and columns by Johnston and other Pulitzer Prize winners have detailed how most S&P 500 companies have diverted mountains of cash from employee pensions to make their quarterly earnings look bigger, boost stock prices and fatten their annual bonuses–all unconscionable and corrupt acts that were perfectly legal, says Johnston, thanks to a Congress that rewrote the legal fine print at the behest of corporate lobbyists.
But the newest development in America’s unfolding retirement security crisis concerns public employees–people who worked in schools, public safety departments, etc. and often are exempt from Social Security because they have other public retirement plans. For years if not decades, top fiscal managers in a mix of cities, counties and states didn’t put away what’s now hundreds of billions of dollars for civil service workers. Now, the same class of public sector executives are taking steps to cut these retirement packages. The question is not whether the cuts are coming, but how will they unfold.
Take Detroit’s bankruptcy filing. Beyond the exceptionally nasty politics surrounding the largest municipal bankruptcy in America, what was pivotal last week was a ruling by the federal bankruptcy judge that classified the promised retirement benefits as “unsecured” debt. That’s a subordinate class to “secured” debt holders, such as investors who bought bonds, and it means that the Court can order reduction in retiree benefits. The fact that Michigan’s state Constitution forbids this kind of breach of contract did not apply, the bankruptcy judge said, because a federal proceeding trumps state law.
Without getting lost in the legal details, the big question is how big a hit will Detroit’s retirees take. A pension in the city averages $19,000 a year.
“This decision sets a terrible precedent,” said Karen Friedman, executive vice president and policy director for the Pension Rights Center. “Allowing a city to cut its retirees’ pensions is a signal to other cities across the country that they don’t need to fund their pensions responsibly and that they can renege on these promises when they run into trouble …
These are not big pensions.”
What’s up next for Detroit is that the city’s emergency financial manager–appointed by the state’s Republican governor–will come back to court with a schedule of proposed benefit cuts and other renegotiated contracts. That’s exactly the stage the California city of Stockton is at in its bankruptcy. It proposes to maintain its pensions but end retiree health benefits, raise the city’s sales tax and pay some bondholders 50 cents per owed dollar. In another California city, San Bernardino, the process is further along, with the city already filing its plan to shortchange creditors and some of them–notably the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS–objecting in court.
Outside bankruptcy court, a slightly different dance is occurring. Last week, the state of Illinois passed a pension reform bill that cuts back pensions by reducing cost-of-living adjustments over three decades, compared to the previous inflation formula. Chicago, which has less than half of what’s needed for its pensions and almost $900 million in unfunded retiree healthcare on top of that, hopes to present its plan early next year.
In almost all of these cases, the priority was cutting benefits–either in pensions, health plans or both–as opposed to making up the shortfall elsewhere. There also is a parallel push to shut down access to pensions, which is a deferred salary, by offering the newest employees only the option of opening a retirement savings account, as well as paying a larger share of their salary for healthcare.
“The assault on retirees today is greater now than at any other time,” said the Pension Rights Center’s Friedman. “We’re seeing it in Detroit.
We’re seeing it in states that are trying to get rid of good pension plans. We’re seeing it in major corporations that are transferring pensions to insurance companies. We’re seeing it in Congress, where members are being heavily lobbied to introduce legislation that would allow multi-employer plans to cut retiree pensions [a technicality that lowers the employer share]. And there are the ongoing efforts to cut back on Social Security.”
What is taking shape is a nationwide retirement security crisis. Experts like Johnston and Friedman are saying that for the first time in decades, tens of millions of elderly people will slide into poverty as they will be left with little more than Social Security to live on–which now averages $1,230 a month, and that’s before paying taxes on it, or Medicare fees.
The reason this is happening in the private sector, as Ellen Schultz noted in her book Retirement Heist, is that executives want to boost stock prices and cash out. In the public sector, it’s because government managers and legislators used retirement funds for all kinds of services instead of raising taxes. While powerful interests are working to steal other people’s money, average Americans are increasingly finding themselves on shaky ground.
“What I have seen in a lot of these cases is that people end up selling their homes,” Schultz told Forbes, when asked what happens to people whose pensions are cut. “Really the only safety blanket that you have is Social Security, which also is under assault. The same retirement industry that dismantled pensions would love to dismantle that program and have a crack at the assets.”
Ron,
You just posted over 1100 words written by someone else. How about providing some info on Bridgeport? It’s a little harder to come by, isn’t it? But this year several people with longstanding service resigned from the Fire Commission (and therefore from Fire Pension Board). And the Mayor has provided no pension schedules, has he, with footnotes that would tell us what investment assumptions are made. Can you provide any assistance regarding Bridgeport currently along the lines of the questions raised? Time will tell.
John Marshall Lee, tell me, did you learn anything over 1100 words written by someone else?
John Marshall Lee, you asked me a few questions, well I think those question would be better addressed by those City Council members who work for the City because their pension is at risk.
The article I posted spells out what is going on nationwide with fire and police pension and other City pensions. Once again the article tells all of us what cities are doing when they said, “But the newest development in America’s unfolding retirement security crisis concerns public employees–people who worked in schools, public safety departments, etc. and often are exempt from Social Security because they have other public retirement plans. For years if not decades, top fiscal managers in a mix of cities, counties and states didn’t put away what’s now hundreds of billions of dollars for civil service workers. Now, the same class of public sector executives are taking steps to cut these retirement packages. The question is not whether the cuts are coming, but how will they unfold.”
JML, this is not a Bill Finch-driven plan, it’s much bigger than him.
*** For a higher pension payout future contract today, the overburdened taxpayers in the city of Bpt will gladly pay you Tuesday 2016 and throw in a hamburger as well, okay Wimpy? *** Especially not knowing what the overall projections of the economic pension contributions status will be. *** 7 come 11 and it’s “Snake eyes!” ***
First, let me say how lucky the friends and family of the residents of this horror will not be attending any funerals. Second, let me say Bridgeport firefighters are heroes on a daily basis as well as our police department. That being said, these pensions are bringing cities across the country and Bridgeport in particular to their knees. Having this conversation with retired “heroes” is a waste. They have worked and deserve their pensions. Benefits are outrageous but they worked their entire careers for this benefit. Going forward, pensions need to go. Benefits need to end with currently retired and soon to be retired personnel. FIREMEN AND POLICE NEED TO BE COMPENSATED appropriately for men and woman who put their lives on the line every day. New hires should be compensated and receive the same benefits as others on social security. The idea retired individuals get raises and make more than those currently working is ludicrous. Arguing with the beneficiaries is a waste, but as voters in other towns and states have proved, public support for pensions and unions is dwindling. Mayor MORAN’s bankruptcy bid approximately 24 years ago, although not well thought out and the City residents were not at all educated to the benefits, would have leveled the playing field and the City would have been on a healthier financial footing. This put Ganim in in office, kept the taxes rising and the grand list stagnant. So here we are 24 years later waiting for development to alleviate the burden on the taxpayer. Pensions need to end without affecting current workers. They should be grandfathered in. New hires will be hired under completely different parameters. Back to the original post before Ron Mackey attempted to find support for his very comfortable and I am certain well-deserved pension, thank G-d no individual was hurt and thanks to Bridgeport’s Finest who put their lives on the line every day. Thanks to the fire department and police department that last week sent Eugene Arnold my best friend’s father to his resting place with total respect and presence. He was 87 and a retired Fireman and a hero to many.
Steven Auerbach, thanks for sharing about firefighter Eugene Arnold.
Most residents of Bridgeport have no idea what a Bridgeport firefighters does. Bridgeport firefighters take great pride in how they fight fires, they do a interior attack, which means if the house or business has someone inside they are going inside that building as soon as they arrive to do a search and rescue and to fight the fire from the inside to also save the property. They will not be on the outside of the building or house shooting water at it they will be inside. That means they are breathing toxic chemicals although they have an airpac on. It’s dark, very hot and dangerous working in those conditions, you cannot see anything but still they push through to try to find anyone in the building and then to try to find a way out of that building that is on fire.
There are a few Bridgeport firefighters who post on OIB, Andy Fardy, Donald Day, Ray Lopez and BARF and they all will tell you during their career serving the public was always number one, not their pension because firefighters don’t think that way and during their career they have taken many zero pay raises. Bridgeport firefighters put their heart, body and soul into their job, they get hurt, they injure their body and many times never report it or take time off because they want to serve. But now there are those who feel it’s right to take their hard-earned pension from them, sad, sad.