Sacramento teachers give Jay Schenirer an F.
Here’s why—
The city of Bell turned into California’s political outrage of the year with its never-ending parade of revelations about gargantuan salaries and retirement perks for a select group of city officials. Meanwhile in Sacramento a similar story has continued to unfold concerning fat cat benefits with Jay Schenirer — a City Council candidate — at center stage.
Back in 2000, Schenirer was a board member of the Sacramento City Unified School District who voted to triple the pensions of three top administrators by creating a controversial pension scheme known as “CASA” – despite community warnings about the proposal. Eventually those warnings would be entirely substantiated. CASA became the subject of a Sacramento Bee investigation and a scathing grand jury report. It was deemed illegal by the California Public Employees Retirement System and dismantled.
Now, the financially struggling district has been forced to go to court to seek more than $4 million in reimbursement for unwinding the complicated retirement plan. Thanks Jay!
The idea behind CASA was to remove it from CalPERS and Social Security, allowing administrators to pay less into a pension plan but recoup heftier retirements. It was dreamed up by the top administrator who was to benefit most – chief financial officer Laura Bruno. Superintendent Jim Sweeney and general counsel Martin Fine were also recipients of the
