California’s public employee pension dilemma boils down to this: The California Public Employees Retirement System has scarcely two-thirds of the money it needs to pay benefits that state and local governments have promised their workers. Moreover, CalPERS’ official estimate that it is 70.8% funded is based on an assumption of...
Walters: Bait and Switch on Pensions
Local officials, particularly those in California’s 400-plus cities, have been complaining loudly in recent years about pension costs, raising the specter of insolvency if they continue their rapid increase. Last year, the League of California Cities issued a report declaring that “pension costs will dramatically increase to unsustainable levels.” The California Public...
Walters: Pension Costs Hitting Home — Hard
Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District came into being 14 years ago when four small fire departments serving farms and small towns east of Modesto merged. The district now flirts with insolvency, a case study in how rapidly growing costs for pensions and other employee benefits are clobbering local governments. Four...
Is Your City Ready for California’s Next Recession?
By Judy Lin and Elizabeth Castillo CalMatters California might be enjoying a historic economic expansion, but pockets of the state could be devastated in the next recession and at least 18 cities are even now at high risk of fiscal distress, according to a first-in-the-nation dashboard released Thursday by State Auditor Elaine...
Walters: Pension Benefits Hinge on State Supreme Court Case
California’s public employee unions suffered a potentially heavy blow this year when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that they could not charge “fair share fees” to non-members. Union leaders and their political allies – essentially the entire Democratic Party – feared that the ruling (Janus vs. AFSCME) would entice many...
Jerry Brown’s Last Stand on Pension Reform
Six years ago, as California strained to emerge from the Great Recession, Gov. Jerry Brown worked a minor political miracle — a rebalancing of the massive state pension systems for public employees. Shuttling between unions and the strapped governments on the hook for public sector benefits and paychecks, Brown scaled...