Bankruptcy plan could affect pensions

If current writers for the Orange County Register are freaking out about the paper’s second bankruptcy in six years, former employees are outright furious. They’re fretting about pension plans being lobbed around in bankruptcy court like bald tennis balls–beat-up, unloved, and in danger of never getting fully paid out.
Now, a group of Register alumni are mulling legal options to go after the federal caretaker in charge of representing them.
Documents filed in U.S. bankruptcy court state that Freedom Communications (parent company, of course, to the Reg) owes about $15.5 million as of Sept. 15 into the Register’s pension fund, mandatory payments that former owner Aaron Kushner never bothered to pay. On the plan’s behalf, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the government agency tasked with protecting retirement funds in the public sector, has filed “various notices of federal lien” dating back to August 2014, according to petitions, including liens against Freedom’s properties. Those same petitions also reveal that the IRS levied a $1.66 million excise tax “related to the aforementioned unpaid contributions.”
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