Deception is an interesting thing. Sometimes deception is stating facts about the same thing in two different ways so it is not easy to make a comparison. Sometimes deception is leaving out crucial information. The statement is true as written but incomplete. It gives the appearance of disclosure but important facts are left out. Every great propagandist knows these techniques and they are no mystery to the LTD Finance Department when they talk about Pensions.
Each year the District publishes a document called the Consolidated Annual Financial Report (CAFR). It is required by law to do this. I checked this out with the State. The interesting thing is how LTD reports the cost of the Salaried Pension Plans and the Union Pension Plans. The Salaried Pension Plan cost is reported as a cost as a percent of payroll. The Union Plan is reported as an hourly cost.
REASON: It makes the cost reported in different methods so that readers (like citizens plan beneficiaries or more importantly the Board) to not be able to easily compare these costs. Read the Language for yourself. Read the following from the CAFR (http://ltd.org/site_files/about/cafr_pdfs/10-Notes%20to%20Basic%20Financial%20Statements.pdf)
4. Other Information - (a) Pension Plans
Salaried Employee's Retirement Plan
The District contributes to the Lane Transit District Salaried
Employees' Retirement Plan (LTDSP), which is a single-employer public employees' retirement system. The Plan is administrated by the Board of Trustees of the Lane Transit District Salaried Employees' Retirement Plan. The Board of Trustees is comprised of the president of the Lane Transit District Board of Directors and the general manager and assistant general manager of Lane Transit District.
The Plan provides retirement, disability, and death benefits to
Plan members and beneficiaries. Cost-of-living adjustments are provided to members and beneficiaries at the discretion of the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees of the LTDSP issues a publicly available financial report that includes financial statements and required supplementary information for the LTDSP. The
report may be obtained by writing to the Board of Trustees of the Lane Transit District Salaried Employees' Retirement Plan, P.O. Box 7070, Eugene, Oregon 97401.
The District makes employer contributions as a percentage of actual payroll. The percentage is determined by actuarial valuation. The percentage for fiscal years 2002-2003 and 2001-2002 were 11.6 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively. No contributions were required from active Plan members. For the year ended June 30, 2003, the District's total payroll for all employees and the District's total covered payroll amounted to $13,022,289 and $3,995,250, respectively.
The annual required contribution for the current year
was determined as part of the June 30, 2001, actuarial valuation using the entry age actuarial method. The actuarial assumptions included (a) an 8 percent investment rate of return (net of investment expenses), and (b) projected salary increases of 5 percent per year.
The schedule of District contributions is as follows:
As of July 1, 2004, the District's contribution rate will increase to 14.3 percent of actual covered payroll.
So the CAFR says that the Salaried Pension Plan will increase to 14.3% of their Salaries as of this past July. But what did it cost in as reported for fiscal year 20-03? Now if the CAFR was fair it would compare apples with apples. The Union Pension cost is expressed as an hourly cost per employee (CAFR description to follow in red). So what is the hourly cost for the Salaried Plan? If there are 65 administrative employees, then the cost described above would be more than $3.42 per hour! Don't believe it? Do the math. Folks, you just can't make this stuff up, it is real. 65 employees times 2080 Hours time $3.42 (65 X 2080 X $3.42). The result of our equation is $462,384 or 11.6% of the covered payroll. They are projecting a 5% increase in boss pay and an increasein cost to 14.3% for the current year. That means per hour it will be $4.65 this year (o4-05) for administrative employees.
But wait, now we get the real deception by our honest and trusted leaders and salaried guardians. The CAFR does not even discuss the 6% defined contribution portion of the Salaried Employee Retirement Plan! The cost for this part of the office workers' and bosses' secret retirement plan is $239,700 in the Fiscal Year 02-03 using their own salary figure. This equals another $1.77 per hour (65 x 2080 x $1.77 = $239,304). By leaving out this figure it is not a lie per se, but it is a deception none the less. Ooops we forgot.
How does the District describe the "golden" plan of the Union Trust? Well read the following from the CAFR (http://ltd.org/site_files/about/cafr_pdfs/10-Notes%20to%20Basic%20Financial%20Statements.pdf).
Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 757 Pension Plan
The District contributes to the Lane Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 757 Pension Trust, which is a single-employer public employees' retirement system. The Plan is administrated by the Board of Trustees of the Lane Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 757 Pension Trust. The
Board of Trustees is composed of the president of the Lane Transit District Board of Directors, the general manager of Lane Transit
District, the president of ATU Local No. 757, and an executive board officer of ATU Local No. 757.The Plan provides retirement, disability, and death benefits to Plan members and beneficiaries. Cost-of-living adjustments are provided to members and beneficiaries at the discretion of the Board of
Trustees. The Board of Trustees of Lane Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 757 Pension Trust issues a
publicly available financial report that includes financial statements and required supplementary information for the Lane Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 757 Pension Trust. The report may be obtained by writing to the Board of Trustees of the Lane Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local
No. 757 Pension Trust, P.O. Box 7070, Eugene
Oregon 97401.Contributions are made to the pension plan under the provisions
of the collective bargaining agreement (a deception because the actuary of the plan establishes the cost as determined from the benefits negotiated) between the District and the ATU. The District contributions in effect for FY 2002-2003 and FY 2001-2002 are listed below:
July 1, 2002 $1.74 per compensated hour
July 1, 2001 $1.56 per compensated hour
The actuarial assumptions included an 8 percent investment rate of return (net of investment expenses), and no projected
salary increases are assumed because the rate is based on compensated hours.Our Plan has a deficit but the bosses plan is at 100%!
Actuarial value of assets $11,778,300
Actuarial value of liabilities $15,441,600
Unfunded acturarial accrued liabilities $3,663,300
Funded ratio 76.3%So they did not hide a thing in our pension description. They did not have to. The District pays $1.74 per hour for each hour we work compared to the bosses getting $4.65 per hour. I could not believe the numbers but I have quadruple checked them and others at the Joe Hill LTD Project Team as well. We corrected our first big mistake and came up with the real numbers. (Sorry about the earlier error. It must be the booze or lack of sleep or both). They project no wage increases and they have a huge unfunded amount for our pension.
And they want us to trust them?
They want to build a thing called Team LTD. Well it is like major league baseball for sure. A-Rod can get $25,000,00 per year, Boss Hamm can earn whatever his secret salary is and Boss Hamm still get at least $4.65 bucks an hour in retirement just like the other office workers. Plus he gets at least 6% of his pay to the secret Administrative Retirement Plan. Since Boss Hamm won't tell us his salary we'll just say $3.45 per hour (6% of $120,000). Sweet!
You have got to kidding!
In Solidarity,
Joe Hill
JH41
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