Supervisors Recommend Paying Their Own Retirement

As county employees and the county continue a legal and verbal haggling over the retirement benefits, Orange County Supervisors Janet Nguyen, who serves Fountain Valley, and Todd Spitzer have proposed that Board of Supervisors pay their full employee retirement contributions effective immediately.

A news release was issued Friday by Nguyen’s and Spitzer announcing the recommendation. Below is a portion of the unedited news release. Supervisor Patricia Bates serves Aliso Viejo.

Supervisor Nguyen and Spitzer have also proposed a charter amendment to be placed before the voters on the June 2014 ballot to make this a permanent requirement for County elected officials. In doing so, future Boards of Supervisors cannot reverse this decision without voter approval.

“I ran on a platform promising to mandate employee contributions, making government works pay their pension contribution costs,” Spitzer said. “As elected officials, we must lead by example, so in May, we voted to require that County elected officials pay their full employee retirement contributions.  This charter amendment ensures that vote can never be reversed without the consent of thepeople.”

“We have asked County workers to pay their employee contributions for their retirement, and we need to do the same as Supervisors,” Nguyen said. “We can impose this requirement on ourselves, and we should do so as quickly as possible.”

Both proposals are scheduled to be considered by the Board of Supervisors at its November 5 meeting.  The change to County personnel and salary rules can take effect immediately, but the charter amendment would need to be placed on the June 2014 primary election ballot.