California Professional Firefighters - News Report: San Jose Mayor Used Made-Up Figures to Inflate Pension Risk

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News Report: San Jose Mayor Used Made-Up Figures to Inflate Pension Risk

In an attempt to whip up antagonism toward firefighters and other public workers, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has tossed around a scary estimate of the city's pension obligation -- $650 million.

Turns out the number was something the city just pulled out of its ... hat.

In a stunning investigative report, NBC11 in San Jose revealed that the $650 million estimate used to justify a radical pension rollback was just made up by one city official. The actual estimate of the city's expected pension obligation will likely be only about half as much.

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In the report, City Retirement Services Director Russell Crosby admitted that the big scary number used to justify an attack on workers was "a number off the top of my head."

The station's review of internal emails subsequently revealed that Reed was aware of the offhanded nature of the estimate even as he was using it to bludgeon his employees in national magazine articles.

The emails also revealed that when city officials tried to conduct a formal actuarial estimate, they tried to cook the data to make the problem seem worse. Even then, the figure still came out about a quarter billion dollars below the phony estimate.

San Jose Firefighters Local 230, along with a number of other unions in the city, plan to file a formal ethics complaint against the mayor and retirement services director.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY AND WATCH THE REPORT