His challenger, a retired Santa Clara County fire captain, came about a decade later with a six-figure pension courtesy of California taxpayers. That made him, and the hundreds of other retired California cops and firefighters flooding into the town in recent years, seem practically socialist to the old guard who find it hard to trust new arrivals with pockets full of government cash. Those Golden State exiles collected more than $3.6 billion in state pensions. Jorge Grajeda retired from the Long Beach Police Department in September. That’s when a sergeant he was working patrol with mentioned, almost in passing, a small town in Idaho called Eagle.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 30, 2023 17:49 UTC