The Independent

HJTA, California Pension Reform Score a Major Victory for the Taxpayers Judge orders Orange County Employees Retirement System to turn over public records detailing public employee pensions SACRAMENTO --- Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (also known as “California Pension Reform”) have won a key victory in the battle against out-of-control pensions for state and local bureaucrats. A judge in Orange County has ordered the Orange County Employees Retirement System (OCERS) to turn over information on the lavish pensions of bureaucrats. OCERS must release the names, gross pension amounts, and the last employing agency from which the worker retired. “This is a great day for every taxpayer in the state of California who is fed up with subsidizing cushy retirement programs for government bureaucrats, and who wants to know the whole truth about what we’re paying for,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Associati...

by CalculatedRisk on 11/26/2009 05:55:00 PM From Jon Lansner at the O.C. Register: How banks may lose $430 billion more Banks are projected to lose $430 billion on commercial real estate loans in the next two to three years [said] Stan Mullin, an associate with California Real Estate Receiverships in Newport Beach ... Highlight’s of Mullin’s talk: •$1.4 trillion in commercial loans are coming due in the next five years. •That’s equal to the same amount that came due in the last 15 years. •Lenders could take massive losses on their real estate portfolios from 2010-2013. This is similar to the recent presentation by Dr. Randall Zisler, CEO of Zisler Capital Partners: A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching. Of the $3 trillion of outstanding mortgage debt, $1.4 trillion is scheduled to mature in four years. We estimate another $500 billion to $750 billion of unscheduled maturities (i.e., defaults). And from the WSJ in October: Comme...

November 25th, 2009, 5:00 am · Post a Comment · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer There were 2,386 reports of adult abuse in Orange County in 1994. There were nearly triple that many - 6,380 - in Orange County last year. And 2009 is on track to break records, with 21 new reports every day, or some 7,500 this year. The vast majority of these involve seniors being taken advantage of in their own homes, by friends or family members who are supposed to be protecting them. “Often, the people being abused and neglected don’t want their family member to get in trouble, so they’re hesitant to report anything,” said Carol Mitchell, program manager for Orange County Adult Protective Services. “That’s the biggest threat people get - ‘If you call them to complain, they’re going to put you in a nursing home.‘ But that can’t happen. We don’t have the authority to do that. Our goal is to maintain people in their homes.” Abuse investigations fall into Mitchell’s lap when people live in pr...

by CalculatedRisk on 11/11/2009 08:47:00 AM Matt Padilla at the O.C. Register writes: Foreclosure notices hit record 8,800 Graph from O.C. Register. ForeclosureRadar.com reports that outstanding foreclosure auction notices in Orange County rose to 8,895 at the end of September, the highest in this housing downturn and probably the highest ever. September’s total was up 5% from August and 90% from a year ago. Padilla provides a second graph (see his article) of 90 day delinquencies, foreclosures and REOs. He writes: [The second] chart shows that the ratio of borrowers having missed at least three monthly payments is at nearly 7% and has risen every month for more than three years. It’s incredible that while so many mortgages are delinquent, banks are only holding 0.26% of first mortgages as REOs. Loans in the trial modification period are still considered delinquent, so that might explain some of the increase in 90+ day delinquencies. But that doesn't explain the ...

O.C. double-dippers rake in nearly a half million a year October 14th, 2009, 5:13 am · 61 Comments · posted by Jennifer Muir There’s nothing like sticker shock. That’s just what The Watchdog gets looking at the total amount of dinero county bigwigs like CEO Tom Mauk and Sheriff Sandra Hutchens collect each year. When you add up the pensions they collect from their previous place of employment, and the salaries and benefits they accrue in O.C., they’re raking in nearly a half million bucks a piece. (More specifically, Hutchens earns $492,243 a year from her pension, salary and benefits, and Mauk gets $487,805. We’ll break down those figures later in this post.) Mauk and Hutchens are among the other type of double-dippers working in Orange County. You might remember that the Watchdog wrote a couple weeks ago about Orange County employees who retire, start collecting their pensions, then come back to the county to work part-time. At the time, many of you asked about double-dip...