See who the only public speaker was at this #OakMtg about borrowing $250,000,000 more in debt from Wall Street Banks – deals orchestrated by Oakland City Council reps Jane Brunner and Rebecca Kaplan. #OWS #OO

OakTalk

For the past two years one of the most nettlesome budget issues faced by Oakland has been its unfunded and underfunded benefit liabilities.  As recently reported by the City Administrator, Oakland presently faces an underfunded CalPERS liability (Oakland’s current pension plan) in an undetermined amount, a completely unfunded health benefit liability for retirees of $520 million (sometime referred to as “Other Post-Employment Benefits,” or “OPEB”) and an unfunded $494 million liability for the PFRS retirement plan. The latter is a police and fire retirement plan that closed in 1976, that supports about 1000 retirees and their widows, and that only has one member presently employed by the City of Oakland.  In short, Oakland has an unfunded liability of more than one billion dollars for benefits earned by, and owed to, people who no longer work here.

The PFRS obligation should be the less troublesome of these obligations, because it has…

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the war on civil liberties continues. we need civilian control of OPD before we let OPD use tools like this.

and that won’t happen until the city council and mayor stand up to OPD’s police union, OPOA, which endorses and funds city council candidates and effectively runs OPD.