Don't miss this fantastic crab feed on Saturday, January 31st  at St. Mary's Parish Hall at 58th and M Streets in Sacramento. No Host Cocktails are served at 6:00 p.m and Dinner at 7:00.  Tickets are $35, please contact Craig Barmby at 916-686-8395 to purchase yours!

Online Checklist Helps CalPERS Members Plan For Retirement

CalPERS members who are thinking about retiring in the near future can use the new, online CalPERS Retirement Planning Checklist. The checklist will provide members information starting one year before retirement to the retirement date. It gives quick access to retirement planning tools, publications, forms, and other important resources all in one place.

You can find the new checklist in the ‘For Members’ area of CalPERS On-Line. Go to Retirement Benefits, Retirement & Financial Planning, and then Retirement Planning Checklist.

The page includes a checklist of things that members should do, and the timeframe in which they should be done. This online checklist is interactive, offering members quick access to other pages within the CalPERS Web site.

SACRAMENTO -- The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) today launched a new Web site called my|CalPERS that allows CalPERS members to access their personal account information and to manage their retirement, health benefits, and financial planning needs.
my|CalPERS is a fabulous customer service enhancement for CalPERS members," said CalPERS Chief Executive Officer Fred Buenrostro. It allows members to get their own information from their service credit years, to their current mailing address on file, to information about the health plans they've chosen. Members can also change their mailing address and obtain a retirement benefit estimate."
With my|CalPERS, active and retired CalPERS members can instantly and independently get the information they need and conduct CalPERS transactions online.
my|CalPERS puts members in control because they can conveniently access and view their personal CalPERS information online anytime, anywhere.
my|CalPERS allows members to track the status of their CalPERS transactions such as service credit purchases and disability retirement applications, along with accessing the most current information in their account.
The site also provides news updates, CalPERS Member Home Loan rates, and the asset value of the CalPERS pension fund.
The launch of my|CalPERS establishes the platform for future CalPERS online member self services, a part of CalPERS effort to improve customer service by making more products and services available online. Additional features will be added over the next year.
To use my|CalPERS or get more information about CalPERS, visit the CalPERS On-Line Web site at www.calpers.ca.gov.
CalPERS, with more than $245 billion in assets, is the largest public pension fund in the U.S., administering retirement and health benefits on behalf of 2,600 California State and local government employers for 1.5 million active and retired California public employees and their families.

John Lockhart Steely was laid to rest on Tuesday, April 12th at Mt. Vernon Memorial Park at 8201 Greenback Lane, Fair Oaks.  Remembrances may be made to the Firefighters Burn Institute.

John Steely, a member of Local 522's Executive Board's address to the Sacramento City Council on October 1, 1970:

"For a number of years, gentlemen I was Secretary-Treasurer of the Sacramento Fire Fighters and for the majority of those years I was chairman of our salary commitee and involved in other efforts which we now call negotiations. Out of my experience during those years, there has emerged what I think are several basic trusts which should always be postulated as the basis for any honest and fair wage and hour negotiating procedures in City service. I would like to read them to you, one by one, as they have evolved.

1. Providing honest wages and working hours constitutes the normal cost of doing City business.

2. If city employees are to be considered not to have the right to strike, then the City has reciprocal duty not to take advantage of this fact.

3.  To the extent a public employee is underpaid or is required to work excessive hours, he is compelled to contribute an amount of unpaid labor to the cost of government in addition to his regular taxes, and in effect, subsidize the taxpayer at large.

4. This is very important! To be fair, salaries and other working conditions must be geared to an external, objective, constant standard, whether you call it a formula or compulsary arbitration or whatever, which completely renders salaries immune from political pressures, so that at all times the administration, the public, and the employees know wehre they stand. As a corollary to this, I should saly, that on the employees' side, at all times it should be their practice to make their demands reasonable; and it has been our practice of the fire fighters to make demands which are fair and can be substantiated by the facts.

5. This is an important truth which is very seldom recognized by people in city service -- it is not the fire fighters, councilmen, or personnel officers who determine a fire fighter's duties. It is the nature of fire itself which dictates the terms of that employment.

Now, with respect with that last observation, I want to say to you that it is a source of great discomfort to us to be hired by the City of Sacramento to work in it's fire department on the terms of employment that the city itself requires, which may or may not include fighting fires one percent of the time, or doing this or doing that as some bright, eager, ambitious personnel officers like to dissect our job and break it down to the various things.  The City hires us to be full-time and full-paid fire fighters; and as long as you get the full value of our time, you are obligated to pay us for the full time. It doesn't make a bit of difference if fires never occur at all. If you hire us on those terms, you'll pay us. It is just like your policy of fire insurance. You don't say I"ll pay the premiums every ten years because we might have a fire once in ten years. Either you pay it all the time or you don't get protection.

Now I want to say to you that things are at a very serious turn with reference to the fire fighters state of mind and the City of Sacramento. We are not happy with cerain conditions and we are resolved to do something about them.

In the last few hours we have been insulted, we have been betrayed, we have been maligned by statements that have been issued from this City Hall. Such things as that we will "turn in false alarms" and "hire good squad fire fighters from Oakland" to come up here and do dirty work. You have insulted us and every fire fighter in the State of California. I want to say to you that we do have friends in the fire service throughout the State and every fire fighter in this county is a friend. If things come to the worst, I am sure that we can rely upon their friendship.

You speak of loyalty. We speak of loyalty. We think of it day and night when we slog in the muck and everything else to put out every spark and every piece of horse manure to prevent a rekindle. We think of loyalty, we act. But our people know the difference between loyalty and submission to exploitation, submission to tyranny, to have the product of our labor extorted and unpaid, and I have been commissioned to tell you in no uncertain language, that we have come to the point beyond which we will tolerate no more of the insults and no more of the impasse.

There is yet time, if you move quickly, for minds to meet on the field of reason. We feel that it is your duty as the governing body of this city to ascertain independently for yourselves, the honest facts relative to the situation of wages and to our requests as to a reduction in hours and holidays. You can do it in two hours on the telephone by calling the personnel offices in the 15 cities we were formerly compared with or the six cities you compare us with now, to determine what holidays their people enjoy and what they are paid, or will be paid, in the near future. Perhaps it is on the file in your personnel office this minute. But if you do not move, and we feel the onus is upon you if you do not, I have been instructed to tell you that the Sacramento Fire Fighters of Local 522 stand poised on the brink of the Rubicon and we intend to cross.

Change Limit from 960 Hours in Calendar Year to 960 Hours in Fiscal Year

Effective January 1, 2006, the Legislature has changed the law (Statutes of 2005, Chapter 238, Assembly Bill 1166) that allows a state agency or public agency covered by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) to employ a retired person without reinstatement from retirement or loss or interruption of benefits. Currently, a retired person may be temporarily employed for 960 hours in any calendar year without reinstatement. The change allows a retired person to be temporarily employed for 960 hours in any fiscal year without reinstatement. The Public Employee's Retirement Law defines fiscal year to mean any year commencing on July 1st and ending with June 30th next following.

The change will take effect on January 1, 2006, midway through the fiscal year. The following provides the maximum hours a state agency or public agency may temporarily employ a retired person without reinstatement from retirement or loss or interruption of benefits:

   January 1, 2006 through June 30, 2006                         960 hours maximum

   July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007                               960 hours maximum

   Future fiscal years                                                          960 hours maximum

Other Recent Changes in the Law

Unemployment Insurance

Effective January 1, 2005, Government Code section 21224 (Statutes of 2004, Chapter 398, Senate Bill 1439) was amended to preclude a retired annuitant from returning to employment if, during the 12-month period prior to the appointment, the retired annuitant received unemployment insurance based on employment as a retired annuitant.

A retired person who accepts temporary appointment within 12 months of receiving unemployment insurance as described, must terminate employment on the last day of the current pay period. Further, that person will not be eligible for reappointment as a retired annuitant for 12 months following the last day of employment. A violation of this provision does not require mandatory reinstatement from retirement nor reimbursement of the system.

Requirements for Bona Fide Separation in Service

Effective January 1, 2004, Government Code section 21220.5 was added to the Public Employee's Retirement Law to require that a person who has not attained normal retirement age is required to have a bona fide separation in service before working after retirement without reinstatement or loss or interruption of benefits. The CalPERS Board of Administration subsequently adopted regulations which defined "normal retirement age" and "bona fide separation in service." Those regulations are at California Code of Regulations, title 2, sections 586 - 586.2. Please see Circular Letter 200-181-04 for details about the bona fide separation in service requirements.

For additional information concerning retiree employment, please review the information under Employment after Retirement available on the CalPERS Web site at www.calpers.ca.gov. If you have additional questions, please telephone the Employer Contact Center at 888 CalPERS (or 888-225-7477).

Lori McGarland, Chief

Employer Services Division