California Refuses to Fix Public-Sector Pensions

Serious people know that California faces a serious financial problem because over-sized compensation packages for the state’s public employees are consuming every public dollar in sight and imposing a long-term debt on future taxpayers. Unfortunately, one won’t find many serious legislators in the state Capitol, especially in the majority party these days.

Faced with depressing fiscal numbers, the Sacramento brain trusts have decided that the best way to deal with unfunded pension liabilities is not to reduce the benefits that are causing the problem. Their idea is to create yet another program that would boost pensions for private-sector workers after first deducting 3 percent of workers’ paychecks to fund it. In the view of the Democratic leaders who propose this goofy idea, government pensions are fine. The real problem is the stingy private sector. And they have a new government program to fix it.

State Senators Kevin de Leon and Darrell Steinberg and Assembly member Warren Furutani last month introduced SB 1234. “The bill would require a specified percentage of the annual salary of an eligible employee participating in the retirement or pension plan to be deposited in the Golden State Retirement Savings Trust … .” Read more......