Reg: Pension Bosses Spent Big Bucks For Secrecy

Disturbing data continues to pour in about potential government pension abuses including today's OC Watchdog story revealing that the county's employee pension system spent more than $31,000 in hopes of keeping pension records secret from the public.

That's according to investigative reporter Tony Saavedra, who spent a year fighting the Orange County Employee Retirement System for the information.

Union officials maintain two claims:

]

–that the public has no legal right to know how much former government employees make in retirement pensions and benefits;

–and that there's nothing embarrassing for former rank and file employees in the data.

Judges throughout California, including here in Orange County, have ruled that the union position is bunk. Saavadra got his records and found startling facts, including:

–just four percent of county pensioners (most former executives and cops) grabbed 13 percent–or $60 million–of total annual benefits in 2009;

–about 500 OC retirees, including sheriff-turned-convicted-felon Mike Carona, collect six-figure pensions.

You can read Saavadra's report HERE.

(*This post originally misidentified the retirement system with the employee's union.)

–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

R. Scott Moxley

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.

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