Hard-Earned Benefits At Risk With Legislation


RLACEI

Tom Moutes

Retiree Update

By Tom Moutes, RLACEI Legislative Director

Our retiree healthcare benefits are under attack by the City politicians.

On a 14-0 vote, the City Council passed the Motion (Council file number 20-1606) that aims to reduce the City’s healthcare costs for “current employees and retirees, especially those retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare.” 

In last month’s article (“Retiree Healthcare Is City Council Target”), I laid out the case for why political interference in the provision of LACERS retiree healthcare benefits is completely unnecessary. In short, the benefits are well funded and exceptionally well administered. Therefore, the Council’s attempts to reduce our healthcare benefits are either ill-informed or purely political.

While we await the LACERS staff report to its Board on this matter and the eventual report back to Council by the LACERS staff, there is something you can do to help protect your hard-earned retiree health benefits. The most effective action at this time is to contact the Council offices to tell them:

  • Hands off our hard-earned retiree healthcare benefits.
  • Our retiree healthcare benefits are vested benefits for which many of us retirees paid an extra 4 percent of our paychecks to further ensure that those benefits would be there for us when we needed them.
  • LACERS retiree health benefits are extremely well administered. They are not broken and do not need your political interference.

The most important Council offices to call are of those politicians who either presented or seconded the Motion that could reduce our benefits. Those offices include:

Bob Blumenfield (Co-presenter of the Motion)
(213) 473-7003
Councilmember.Blumenfield@lacity.org

Paul Krekorian (Co-presenter of the Motion)
(213) 473-7002
Paul.krekorian@lacity.org

Paul Koretz (Seconded the Motion)
(213) 473-7005
Paul.koretz@lacity.org

RLACEI continues to fight this benefit-reducing Motion, but we need your help to protect your benefits. Please take a few minutes to contact these Council offices and let them know your thoughts. Through our collective efforts, we can protect our promised benefits that we all worked hard to earn.

The latest information is available on RLACEI’s Facebook page.

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