Los Angeles Councilman Bernard Parks, City Hall's budget committee chief who is warning that soaring payroll and pension costs threaten the city's financial stability, receives $22,000 a month in city retirement benefits, in addition to his $178,789 a year salary, records and interviews show.
A former Los Angeles Police Department chief who served 38 years on the force, Parks operates in a sensitive political role, heading the key council panel that has grappled with a recession-driven $530-million budget shortfall.
While collecting one of the city's biggest pensions -- about $265,000 per year -- plus a hefty city salary, he has overseen a contentious debate about which services and jobs to cut.
"I don't discuss my salary or my pension and I earn both of them," Parks said in a brief phone conversation.
Pension outlays are a growing concern for budget planners. The city could face a $1-billion budget shortfall in 2010-2011, and an even larger deficit the year after, chiefly because of pension investment losses, according to the city's top budget analyst.
Some critics contend packages like Parks' underscore the need for broader reform, particularly given the current financial stress on taxpayers and public agencies. "The term is double dipper. And it's legal . . . he earned a pension under the laws as they exist," said Jack Dean, a board member with the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, which wants new controls on public-sector retirement plans. But "the main concern is, all of the formulas . . . are unsustainable," he said. "Pensions are the calamity that is about to befall us."
City-employee unions dispute that, saying they will help solve the pension problems, including negotiating a possible early retirement package and increases in employee contributions. But benefits should not be cut, partly because city workers don't receive Social Security retirement payments, said Barbara Maynard, spokeswoman for the Coalition of LA City Unions.
"There are going to be those very highly paid [public employees] who end up with large pensions," she said. But people should not "use public sector workers and retirees as political footballs. These are real people retiring on an average of $40,000 a year," she said. City civilian retirees average $3,319 a month in pension payments; police and fire pensioners average $4,486, officials said.
