Michigan citizens just lost ground in the struggle for transparency in government. Hidden inside Senate Bill 797, an otherwise innocuous refinement of public pension investment regulations, was this provision exempting details of a public employee's pension from the Freedom of Information Act:

Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, information regarding the calculation of actual or estimated retirement benefits for members of the system is exempt from disclosure by the system or the political subdivision sponsoring the system pursuant to Section 13(1)(d) of the Freedom of Information Act, 1976 PA 442, MCI 15.243.

The bill was signed by Governor Snyder on December 5 as Public Act 347 of 2012. I wrote him in November asking him to veto it, but apparently I don't have as much influence as I thought. (I like to think that it was I who instigated the pension tax.)

Maybe I should take this new exemption personally. I've been requesting pension calculation sheets for recent City of Lansing retirees and posting the information on my website (police and firefighter pensions are here, all others here).

Update: From the February 19, 2013 minutes of the Police and Fire Retirement System board meeting (page 2): "Attorney [Ken] Lane discussed the FOIA changes making calculations for individuals confidential."

The reason we need to see actual pension calculations is that pensions are complicated. Typically, they are calculated by multiplying these 3 factors together:

Years of service
Final average compensation (FAC)
Multiplier

Years of service is usually pretty obvious if you have the hire date and termination date.

The multiplier or "pension factor" is usually available on the employer's website. For state employees and teachers, it is 1.5%. For state police, it is 2.4%. For Lansing's police and firefighters, it is 3.2%. For other City of Lansing employees, it varies between 2.3% and 2.8%, depending on the employee group.

The mysterious one is FAC. An employee's salary is not so easy to obtain, and salary isn't all that goes into FAC. For example, FAC for a Lansing policeman includes the following:

Annual base salary

Overtime pay (including holiday pay)

Longevity

Gun allowance

Clothing allowance

Sick leave reimbursement (buy-back)

Shift premium

Retroactive pay (prorated by effective date)

In the collective bargaining process, unions push the employer to include anything that remotely resembles compensation, because the higher the FAC, the higher the pension. And to further increase that "final" average, individual employees do all they can to delay payments until those last 2 or 3 years before retirement. They let their sick leave accumulate, get as much overtime as possible, and so on. For 24 Lansing police whose pension details I obtained, FAC exceeded salary by an average of $11,573:

FAC	Pension	Salary	FAC-Salary
68,829	55,063	61,194	7,635
67,289	53,831	61,194	6,095
112,944	90,356	109,075	3,869
77,122	61,698	67,184	9,938
80,603	64,482	57,179	23,424
74,358	59,846	67,184	7,174
83,971	67,177	67,184	16,787
75,182	60,146	63,294	11,888
67,283	53,826	61,194	6,089
85,198	68,159	73,923	11,275
70,789	56,631	61,194	9,595
87,283	69,827	67,184	20,099
83,330	66,664	67,184	16,146
67,596	54,077	61,194	6,402
83,133	66,507	73,923	9,210
66,975	53,580	61,194	5,781
89,326	71,461	73,923	15,403
69,958	55,966	57,179	12,779
66,083	52,867	57,179	8,904
91,386	73,109	73,923	17,463
63,798	51,039	57,179	6,619
73,118	58,495	61,194	11,924
88,161	70,529	67,184	20,977
91,472	73,178	79,206	12,266

For 3 of them (highlighted), FAC was so high that their pensions exceed their salaries. And this was with only 25 years of service.

The new law goes into effect 91 days after the end of 2012, which is April 1, 2013.