The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "retirees" ...
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MPERS - Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System
Penny Roberts investigates the $1 billion retirement fund for the 9,300 full time police officers in 150 departments in Louisiana. The Louisiana Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System took a $200 million hit in the stock market, then spent $20 million on golf courses, then made a $6 million land deal with a non-existant company. Now the fund wants a bailout from taxpayer-funded local police departments, the Louisiana legislature, and the retirees it serves. In Baton Rouge alone, the department's pension costs have risen from $2.1 million to $5.2 million a year.
Tags: retirement funding; pension; police pension system; pension costs; Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System
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Money To Burn: The Ohio Teachers' Pension Fund
Tipped off by a school superintendent and a former teacher, the Copley delves into the glaring incongruencies that highlight the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. The investigation reveals that though the system was losing $12.3 billion from its investment portfolio over a three-year period, its board and administrators spent $15 million on staff bonuses, artwork, parties, furniture storage, childcare, executive perks and travel. From the questionnaire, "they also boosted the system's annual budget by nearly $ 5 billion. Meanwhile, the health care costs of retirees skyrocketed and pension benefits declined".
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Wiped Out
BUSINESSWEEK tells the tale of how roughly 90 Proctor & Gamble workers were lured into quitting their jobs by the siren's call of a local stockbroker who promised them untold riches. Bill Gibbs, the stockbroker, convinced older workers to quit their jobs so he could gain control of their company-funded retirement accounts. As Gibbs' original investments began to falter, he sank his clients' portfolios heavily into tech and Internet stocks just as those sectors were peaking and about to begin devastating declines. Within a year, most of these workers saw their life savings wiped out.
Tags: A.G. Edwards; Procter & Gamble Co.; oil; health benefits; stockbroker; investing; life insurance; retirees; tech stocks; Internet stocks; portfolio; J.D. Power and Associates Inc.; First Union Brokerage; high yields; Dow Jones Industrial Average; Dow Dividend Strategy; Individual Retirement Account; Chevron; General Electric; General Motors; International Paper; 3M; high risk stocks; bankruptcy
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Old Hire
The Denver Post analysis of pension records reveals an outdated pension system that "funnels millions of tax dollars to retired city police officers and firefighters by linking their pensions to the salaries of current department employees, even decades after they've retired." As city and state budgets tighten, the strain of the pension system is becoming even greater.
Tags: pensions; budgets; Denver; Colorado; retirees; old-hire plans; retirement system; government pensions; police officers
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Patching Up Sick Call
"Few issues in civilian life are more intractable, or more emotional, than balancing people's need for quality health care against the costs to society at large. Those difficult choices are at the heart of the controversy over how best to fix Medicare and Madicaid." Congress and the administration battle cots, demographics, and organized retirees as they try to reform military health care.
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Cut Loose
Large corporations have an incentive to scale back retiree benefits since they have to claim them as liabilities on their balance sheets. The Progressive examines the ways in which changes to retiree health care benefits affect people living on fixed incomes.
Tags: retirees; health benefits
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Suddenly Poor: Insurers Help Elderly Get Medicaid to Pay for Nursing Homes
Davis explains how "thousands of middle-class and even affluent retirees" have become eligible for Medicaid by sheltering their wealth in "Medicaid annuities." Medicaid won't pay for nursing home care if people have assets greater than $2,000. Usually that means that people's assets go to pay for nursing home care until they're gone, after which time Medicaid kicks in. But when seniors put their money into an annuity, they can "appear poor enough to get the government to pick up the tab for a nursing home. In reality, they would be far from impoverished. The annuity would pay back their entire nest egg in monthly installments over a few years." The insurance companies who sell Medicaid annuities say they aren't breaking any rules. "But critics such as state legislators see the annuities as a clear abuse and assail the insurance industry for profiting from a product that they estimate has drained $1 billion from Medicaid so far."
Tags: Medicaid annuities; nursing homes; insurance companies
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Companies Transform retiree-medical plans into sources of profits
The Wall Street Journal reveals that many companies are transforming the retiree-medical programs into opportunities to bolster earnings. The journal says this was made possible by an accounting rule, which was supposed to force companies to acknowledge the huge retiree-medical liability many of them seemed to face. But many companies invoked the mammoth liabilities to explain why they had to reduce retiree benefits.
Tags: medical benefits; retiree medical program; medical premiums; medical insurance
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Tin Men
Dateline's investigation focused on mobile repair contractors in the southern California town of Hemet. Hemet is home to a large number of retirees, many of whom live on fixed incomes. The community has had ongoing problems with unscrupulous contractors who sell unnecessary work at inflated prices and perform work in substandard fashion.
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Family ties bind the work force in close-knit Linden
This Star-Ledger story is on nepotism at the Linden city hall, where one out of three people on the payroll is related either to someone else on the payroll, a municipal retiree or an elected city official.
Tags: municipal workers