[QUOTE=J Garfield;143550]We interrupt this program to bring you this from Doell’s site. Wow!!!
Don Cree’s ‘Pensionpalooza’: favored treatment for a favored few?
If you as an AMO member took an in-service lump sum distribution from the defined benefit AMO Pension Plan before this option was eliminated in 2009, you surely remember the hard and fast rule: if you take the lump-sum payout, you give up all claim to any other benefits from the AMO Pension Plan.
As it turns out, this rule may be a lot more flexible when applied to at least some AMO officials — in this specific case, Don Cree, a Tom Bethel loyalist and former AMO Great Lakes vice president kept on the AMO payroll for nearly four years as a “special assistant” to Bethel following Cree’s defeat for the vice president’s position by John Clemons in the AMO election of officers in 2010.
When Tom Bethel asked me earlier this year to write an AMO newspaper article announcing Cree’s retirement on May 31, I held to past practice in these cases and asked Tom for Cree’s work history so that I could list vessels he had worked on and the licensed positions he had held during his AMO career.
Instead of the familiar and simple chronological list of Cree’s jobs, Bethel sent me Cree’s history as an AMO Plans trustee and a 34-page document titled “Work History under the American Maritime Officers Pension Plan,” essentially an estimate of the monthly benefits Cree would receive in retirement. This document was dated May 16, 2014.
The numbers were startling, given that the defined benefit AMO Pension Plan was frozen in December 2009, and considering that Cree had reportedly taken a lump-sum pension a few years earlier. Cree was looking at a “gross monthly life annuity” of about $10,857 a month. This figure was derived from Cree’s earnings in 2007, 2008 and 2009 — his “high three.” The three-year earnings total was $450,982.81.
This AMO Pension Plan document included this disclaimer, among others: “Your actual benefit cannot be determined until you file a pension application.”
All of this is significant because, during the 2010 AMO election campaign, Tom Bethel’s slate identified Bethel, José Leonard, Joe Gremelsbacker and Don Cree as having “qualified for and received in-service lump-sum benefits from the AMO Pension Plan.”
This disclosure four years ago was included in the Bethel team’s political commentary on controversies arising from the state of the AMO Pension Plan and the status of lump-sum retirement benefit recipients in the then-developing AMO Defined Contribution Plan. If Cree hadn’t “qualified for and received” a lump-sum distribution at that point, neither he nor anyone else in the Bethel administration or in AMO Plans attempted to correct the Bethel campaign’s statement.
This was important in the context of Cree’s status in May 2014 as a former AMO Great Lakes vice president and his continued AMO employment in what amounted to a new but unofficial four-year term in office.
Cree’s retirement appears to have been enhanced by a lifetime monthly benefit of approximately $10,857 from the AMO Pension Plan — on top of the in-service lump-sum pension benefit distribution he had already received.
Factor in the balances in Cree’s AMO Defined Contribution, AMO 401(k) and AMO Pension Plan Money Purchase Benefit accounts, and you’ll agree — not bad for a guy voted out of AMO office four years ago.
And you’ll ask: if Don Cree received special consideration from the AMO Pension Plan, who else on the AMO payroll is in line for the same deal?[/QUOTE]
So a news flash!!! Apparently this whole story on Don Cree is 100% WRONG!!!