Calpers

Dailey Mayo received some stunning news in the mail last week: an 85% rate increase for the long-term-care insurance he has had for 15 years from the California Public Employees' Retirement System. The retired sales manager in Pasadena said his monthly premium of nearly $400 would jump to $738, or about $8,850 annually, under this plan. "I'm 82 now and I might need this care soon," he said. "It really ticks me off that they are doing this. " More than 110,000 CalPERS policyholders are receiving similar news after the pension fund's board approved the changes late last year.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System picked four new HMO plans for five-year health insurance contracts starting next year, a blow to incumbent carrier Blue Shield of California. The giant pension fund voted Wednesday to split up Blue Shield's statewide HMO contract and offer additional plans from Anthem Blue Cross, UnitedHealth Group Inc., Sharp Health Plan and Health Net Inc. alongside Blue Shield. Those five companies will offer health maintenance organization plans to about 400,000 people who have Blue Shield coverage now as well as to other CalPERS members participating in open enrollment this fall.

The saddest lesson of recent years for the American middle class is that those who "do the right thing" are first in line to get hammered. You devote a lifetime to a single employer, only to get laid off with a cheese-paring severance package. You finance your own retirement by religiously funding your 401(k), and Wall Street lays an egg on your head. Here's a lesson baby boomers are just beginning to learn: You pay for long-term-care insurance for years, even decades, and then your insurance company changes the rules.

A key committee of the California Public Employees' Retirement System backed its staff's recommendation to break up Blue Shield of California's statewide HMO contract. The agency's pension and health benefits committee voted Tuesday in favor of awarding health-maintenance-organization contracts to both Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield to cover most of the state. The committee also supported giving an HMO contract to UnitedHealth Group Inc. in portions of Northern and Southern California and enlisting Sharp Health Plan in San Diego County.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System picked four new HMO plans for five-year health insurance contracts starting next year, a blow to incumbent carrier Blue Shield of California. The giant pension fund voted Wednesday to split up Blue Shield's statewide HMO contract and offer additional plans from Anthem Blue Cross, UnitedHealth Group Inc., Sharp Health Plan and Health Net Inc. alongside Blue Shield. Those five companies will offer health maintenance organization plans to about 400,000 people who have Blue Shield coverage now as well as to other CalPERS members participating in open enrollment this fall.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System has begun automatically deleting any emails older than 60 days, raising concerns among watchdog groups that the giant pension fund could be destroying evidence of misdeeds. CalPERS has been under state and federal investigation over allegations that former executives and board members improperly influenced the fund's investment decisions and strong-armed a medical benefits vendor to retain a former board member as a consultant, according to an internal review ordered by the fund and released in April.

SACRAMENTO -- The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the country, posted a mere 1% return on its investment for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The performance came in well below the fund's target of 1.7% growth in its $234.3-billion portfolio, said Joseph Dear, CalPERS' chief investment officer. The return for fiscal 2012 also was way below CalPERS' long-term growth strategy, which calls for a 7.5% average annual rate of return to pay for retirement benefits for more than 1.3 million members.

Pension fund The California Public Employees' Retirement System is the largest public pension fund in the nation. Based in Sacramento, the fund -- known as CalPERS -- provides retirement benefits for 1.6 million active and inactive state and local government workers, retirees and their families. It also manages healthcare benefit programs for 1.3 million people. Overseen by a 13-member board of administration. Some board members are elected by state workers and retirees; others are appointed.

Two former administrators in the city of Vernon who received lavish compensation will have their retirement benefits slashed in what state pension officials described as the largest public pension reduction in state history. Bruce Malkenhorst, who had the biggest public pension in California, $545,000 a year, will see his yearly benefit drop to about $115,000. His successor, Eric T. Fresch, will have his pension stripped completely. Fresch, who made as much as $1.6 million in 2008, has yet to formally retire but one expert estimated his pension's value at about $300,000 a year.

The federal fraud indictments of two former CalPERS officials , announced today in San Francisco, represent the dropping of shoes from a very tall height -- at least that's one explanation of why the case has taken so long.  The charges against former CalPERS Chief Executive Fred Buenrostro and former CalPERS board member Alfred Villalobos stem from wrongdoing that may date back as far as 2002. A report CalPERS commissioned from the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson was made public in 2011.

Blue Shield of California may be losing its longtime grip on one of the healthcare industry's most coveted insurance contracts. Officials at the California Public Employees' Retirement System are recommending breaking up Blue Shield's current statewide HMO contract and replacing it with as many as four health plans for more than 400,000 public workers and their families. The CalPERS board of administration will consider its staff's recommendation next week and decide among seven companies that submitted bids.

The search for two teenage hikers believed to be lost in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon was set to continue Tuesday morning. About 8:25 p.m. Sunday, Nicholas Cendoya, 19, and Kyndall Jack, 18, both of Costa Mesa, called authorities from a cellphone and said they were lost, the Orange County Sheriff's Department said. The two thought they were about a mile away from their vehicle, the Sheriff's Department said, but the phone's battery died before authorities were unable to pinpoint a location.

A major construction project to install a new power circuit in Los Feliz will force road closures and limit left-hand turns in the neighborhood starting Tuesday and stretching into the fall. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will begin installation of a new underground and overhead 4.8-kilovolt circuit to alleviate other overloaded circuits that collectively serve about 5,500 customers in Los Feliz, the utility company said. The first of the project's three phases begins Tuesday, according to a statement from the DWP. As a result, no left turns will be allowed at the intersection of Los Feliz Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Officials expect this phase to last until May. In the coming months, construction crews will install 1,750 feet of conduit and more than 6,000 feet of cables and related equipment.

The city of Stockton's impending bankruptcy case sets up a battle over employee pensions. A federal judge ruled Monday that Stockton was eligible for bankruptcy protection , rebutting Wall Street creditors who claimed the city was not. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein found that Stockton can move forward with a plan to reorganize its debt. The city's creditors, he said, had acted in bad faith by refusing to negotiate. "The creditors got a big black eye today," said Karol Denniston, an attorney who helped draft the legislation that guided Stockton's mandated mediation before filing for Chapter 9 protection.

A federal judge ruled Monday that Stockton is eligible for bankruptcy protection, but left the door open for CalPERS obligations to be part of negotiations in the coming phases of the bankruptcy. Over the objection of creditors who argued the city could come up with more money, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said Stockton can move forward with a plan to reorganize debt. He twice stated that the creditors had acted in bad faith and had refused to pay their share of the costs for negotiations.

SACRAMENTO - Three years after a major influence-peddling scandal rocked California and the nation's largest public pension fund, a federal grand jury indicted two former top officials on fraud, conspiracy and obstruction charges. The indictment, unsealed Monday in San Francisco, names as defendants Federico Buenrostro Jr. of Sacramento, a former chief executive of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, and Alfred J.R. Villalobos of Reno, Nev., a former CalPERS board member and one-time deputy Los Angeles mayor.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is reviewing its relationship with private equity firm Apollo Management in the wake of steep losses on investments placed with the New York asset manager. The review began in May and is focused on reducing administrative and management fees, said Pat Macht, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento agency known as CalPERS, which manages $200 billion in retirement assets -- the country's largest pension fund -- on behalf of current and former state and municipal employees.

Whether we're talking about corporate affairs or home ec, it's a fundamental fact that housecleaning doesn't work unless it's thorough. Leave the smallest task undone, and the rats and bugs come swarming back. So the question to ask about the financial scandal at CalPERS is this: Has the place been sufficiently scrubbed clean? The affair is centered on placement agents, the middlemen hired by Wall Street firms and other money managers to snag investment capital from institutional investors.

The federal fraud indictments of two former CalPERS officials , announced today in San Francisco, represent the dropping of shoes from a very tall height -- at least that's one explanation of why the case has taken so long.  The charges against former CalPERS Chief Executive Fred Buenrostro and former CalPERS board member Alfred Villalobos stem from wrongdoing that may date back as far as 2002. A report CalPERS commissioned from the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson was made public in 2011.