Trust Funds

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money is sitting in inactive Los Angeles trust funds, some idle for more than decade, at a time when declining revenue has forced the city to raise fees and cut services, according to an audit of the Department of Public Works. The audit, released Wednesday by Controller Laura Chick, also found that the city was forced to return $193,000 to the state from the Griffith Observatory Trust Fund "due to poor program oversight." In addition, the city failed to recoup $5.4 million in labor costs on the refurbishment project and should claim $3.1 million left over in the observatory trust fund, the audit stated.

In 1920, Columbia University received a gift of more than half a million dollars from a longtime resident of Des Moines. Six days before her death, Lydia C. Chamberlain, a wealthy divorcee, had created a trust meant to finance a fellowship for Columbia graduate students. At $750, the first Lydia C. Roberts Graduate Fellowship - reflecting her maiden name - covered Columbia's tuition and living expenses. But Columbia hasn't touched the trust in years, because the money is entangled in what officials say are impractical and illegal restrictions from a bygone era. Under the terms of the trust, a recipient had to be an Iowa-born graduate of one of the state's colleges or universities, and not planning to study law, medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry or theology.

Manville Corp. has agreed to make additional payments of as much as $520 million over seven years to the trust set up to benefit asbestos victims. A comprehensive settlement disclosed Monday also will revamp the way claims are paid, giving priority to the most gravely ill. The plan is meant to settle about 150,000 pending claims by people injured by Manville-produced asbestos.

WASHINGTON - The federal government projected Friday that Medicare's main trust fund would not run in the red until 2026, two years later than projected last year, in part because of slower growth in healthcare costs. Prospects for the Social Security retirement program, meanwhile, remain largely unchanged from last year. The program's main trust fund, which provides assistance to about 46 million retirees and their relatives, will be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2035, according to an annual report from the board of trustees that oversees the nation's major entitlement programs.

The plot goes something like this: Child becomes a Hollywood star. Child makes a lot of money. Child turns 18 and--you guessed it--there's no money left. It happened to former actress Mimi Gibson, and now she's pushing for a law to make sure it doesn't happen again. A bill before the state Senate would require that 15% of a child star's gross earnings be set aside in trust until the minor turns 18.

Even the most inattentive 401(k) owner surely understands today that the markets can bite you where it hurts, that promises of long-term investment gains can evaporate in the blink of a short-term crash and that the less understandable an investment scheme is, the more dangerous it is. Why, then, is California Public Utilities Commissioner Timothy A. Simon pressing so hard to subject billions of dollars of public trust fund money earmarked for...

Two expenditures from the Lopez Canyon Community Amenities Trust Fund have appeared on the City Council's agenda this week, with one receiving approval and the other now set for a vote. The smaller of the two, a $2,500 award to Hillview Village, a mental health facility serving Lake View Terrace, passed unanimously Tuesday. Today, the council is scheduled to vote on the proposed use of $623,553 from the trust fund to secure the purchase of a 1.53-acre vacant lot at 12002 Osborne St.

Italy has announced plans to combat the global AIDS epidemic through a proposal that would have each of the world's 1,000 largest corporations give at least $500,000 to help establish a $1-billion anti-AIDS trust fund.

Travis Butler broke the hearts and opened the wallets of people he never met. From across the country, money poured in. Checks written by strangers who couldn't bear to think of a boy so terrified, and so determined not to be treated as an orphan, that he lived with his mother's corpse. More than $200,000 was collected. Then his maternal grandmother, Shirley Wilder, tried to use it to buy a big house.

Parents of two small children who were killed in a Memorial Day weekend traffic accident in Echo Park thanked the public Wednesday for contributing to a trust fund that was established for the families. Police presented the families of Luisa Cornejo, 3, and Edwin Camacho, 4, with checks totaling $6,000 at a news conference at the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division.

Even the most inattentive 401(k) owner surely understands today that the markets can bite you where it hurts, that promises of long-term investment gains can evaporate in the blink of a short-term crash and that the less understandable an investment scheme is, the more dangerous it is. Why, then, is California Public Utilities Commissioner Timothy A. Simon pressing so hard to subject billions of dollars of public trust fund money earmarked for...

The Los Angeles County probate judge who oversees an elderly heiress' trust fund approved $50,000 in compensation Tuesday for a Kabbalah Centre official who is under criminal investigation for his handling of the woman's financial affairs. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael I. Levanas signed off on John E. Larkin's payment request without comment. The money covers work that Larkin, a veteran Hollywood financial advisor, performed last year as a trustee for an $11-million family trust fund benefiting 88-year-old Susan Strong Davis.

Democrats have seized on a looming increase in the interest rate on certain federal student loans as their latest wedge issue, hoping to portray Republicans as caring more about the wealthy than they do about working-class and middle-income college students. Those students might want to spend a few moments studying how Senate Democrats planned to come up with the money to pay for one more year of cheaper loans. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tried to start debate on his student loan interest rate proposal Tuesday, knowing full well that he didn't have the 60 votes needed to stop a GOP filibuster.

The headlines are scary: Social Security is going bust. Social Security is nearly bankrupt. True? Not really. Here are the facts: The combined Social Security trust funds will be exhausted in 2033 , three years earlier than projected in last year's annual report. The Social Security disability insurance program "faces the most immediate financing shortfall of any of the separate trust funds," according to trustees. It will exhaust its trust fund in 2016, two years earlier than projected last year.

Highlighting the financial peril confronting Medicare, the federal government predicted Friday that the program's largest trust fund would run out of money in 2024, five years earlier than projected last year. Medicare's deteriorating condition contrasts with Social Security, whose funds will not be exhausted until 2036, according to an annual report by trustees who oversee the two mammoth entitlement programs. The faltering Medicare finances — caused in part by the sluggish economy — are expected to intensify pressure on both parties in Washington to move forcefully to shore up the health plan that covers care for more than 47 million elderly and disabled Americans.

Caught in the sluggish recovery from the last recession, Social Security and Medicare face an increasingly dismal fiscal future, the federal government reported Friday in its annual review of the two mammoth entitlement programs. Medicare, which now provides health insurance to some 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, could begin running a deficit in 2024, five years earlier than projected last year. And Social Security, which last year began paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes, now faces insolvency in 2036, compared to 2037 in last year's projections.

A federal judge has given lawyers for the Interior Department and U.S. Treasury and attorneys representing thousands of Native Americans until Nov. 1 to show that they are close to reaching agreement on overhauling the government's long-troubled Indian trust fund system. U.S. District Judge Royce C.

The aunt of Channon Phipps, the teen-age hemophiliac with AIDS who was the first California student to sue his way back to class, was arrested and charged Friday with grand theft in connection with her nephew's trust fund, authorities said. Deborha Jean Franckewitz, 36, was taken into custody at 3 a.m. at the Lake Forest Comfort Inn by Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies bearing an arrest warrant. She was being held Friday night in Orange County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

The "lockbox" is back. The "lockbox," you may recall, was the concept presidential candidate Al Gore used during the 2000 election to signify his devotion to the security of Social Security. The principle supposedly was to sequester the program's annual surplus, which was then running about $150 billion a year, so that it couldn't be frittered away on irresponsible government spending. After the election, the lockbox disappeared from public discourse. But the idea that the government is squandering Social Security assets, leaving nothing to pay benefits, has never faded.

Social Security now doles out more money in benefit checks than it takes in from taxes, and its trust fund is projected to run out of cash in about 26 years. So this is a good model for healthcare reform? Yes, indeed, says Philip Bredesen, a former health insurance executive who just completed two terms as Tennessee's governor. In his book, "Fresh Medicine," he argues that a key element of meaningful healthcare reform is creation of a Social Security-like trust fund that would raise money from payroll taxes and issue vouchers to all Americans.