County Pension System Takes $272 Million Hit

25 Aug County Pension System Takes $272 Million Hit

Article from the San Bernardino Sentinel, written by Mark Gutglueck

The 42,000 members of the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association were provided with two disheartening disclosures at the association’s board meeting held on Thursday, August 6. Most shocking was that in the last year, the association suffered a $272.43 million loss on its investments.

Moreover, the membership was informed, as a result of the so-called Alameda decision, members will no longer be able to include standby pay, on-call pay, and call-back pay or other add-ons with their salaries to calculate their pension allotments. Those who were receiving pensions since 2013 based on incorporating such add-ons into their salary totals in all likelihood will need to make refunds to the retirement system, although that decision has yet to be officially made.

The San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement System manages the monetary pool that provides the pensions for retired San Bernardino County employees, as well as for the retirees from 15 other public agencies, including the Barstow Fire Protection District, the Big Bear Fire Authority, the California Electronic Recording Transaction Network Authority, the California State Association of Counties, the City of Big Bear Lake, the City of Chino Hills, the Crestline Sanitation District, the Department of Water & Power of the City of Big Bear Lake, the Hesperia Recreation and Park District, the Law Library for San Bernardino County, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Superior Court of California, as well as the staff for the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association itself.

Known by the acronym SBCERA, the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association and those associated with it have long touted it as one that is more competently managed and achieving greater investment returns than the pension system for the State of California and an overwhelming number of the municipal and county governmental entities in the state, the California Public Employees Retirement System.

Recent developments and challenges, however, have resulted in SBCERA not only failing to meet its investment return goals, but actually experiencing losses that have caused the $10.46 billion in total assets it had last year to attrite to $10,102,541,405.

What’s more, the San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association in the same period paid its investment managers $109,823,343.

As a consequence, one member grumbled, “SBCERA paid investment managers 1.29% to lose 3.2%. We also paid our investment staff six figure salaries plus bonuses. The board oversaw and approved all that.

Read full article San Bernardino Sentinel