The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power paid out at least $435 million in pension benefits last year, with an electrical engineer who received $363,000 topping the list, it was reported Tuesday.
Robert Fellner, a research director for the group Transparency California, which released the figures, said the numbers give an idea of the size of the costs that go into paying public employee pensions every year, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
With the recently approved pay raises for LADWP employees to be doled out over the next five years, he said, “an exceptionally generous — and expensive — retirement plan means that the DWP’s famously above-market salaries end up costing ratepayers twice.”
LADWP officials disputed the idea that retirement costs in the future will continue to be high, saying the utility’s “pension system was substantially reformed in 2013 and the changes are estimated to save ratepayers approximately $5 billion over 30 years,” the Daily News reported.
“New employees hired since January 2014 are part of a pension system with a higher retirement age, reduced retirement formula, increased employee contribution rate, increased time needed to vest, and elimination of the DWP matching employee contributions, as well as suspended reciprocity with the City of Los Angeles,” the utility said in a statement cited by the Daily News.
“This pension reform will save ratepayers as LADWP’s rapidly aging workforce retires and new employees are hired.”
Nearly 25 percent of the workforce is now under this new plan, utility officials said, according to the Daily News.
The data released by Transparent California shows pension dollar figures and other details for more than 7,300 former LADWP employees, and it is the first time such information has been made public, according to Fellner.
“The fact is, I just never thought they’d give it to us,” Fellner told the Daily News. Transparent California has been requesting the data since 2013, and it was unclear why the LADWP finally decided to release the 2016 pension information this year, he said.
