You are an expert on this topic. I am not.

Assuming nothing drastic is done (and I for one believe nothing drastic will be done), aren’t CALPERS and CALSTRS doomed to insolvency? Accounting tactics and a few measures here or there may delay the inevitable, but I don’t see a politically viable solution in California.

Private companies that make unsustainable pension promises eventually go bankrupt or otherwise close down. Public employees can cajole, threaten and scream for more taxes, but you can only squeeze so much out of the rest of us without consequences resulting in less total tax revenue being collected. On the other hand, I do not expect public employees of any stripe to voluntarily accept a substantially less generous pension than they have been promised.

Is this just a slow moving train wreck that we are standing around watching?

You evidently do not even consider public employees as part of your citizen group, and one who pays as many taxes as anyone else. To me, the economic equation is simple: If you need a product, you go to the store and buy it, and the receiver of your payment, takes that money and fulfills his own needs, including retirement funding, or whatever. The same holds true with the people who provide public services. Nobody is stealing anything–they are earning it. I am never going to “damn” a system that I am benefitting from, when there was never anything dishonest about the process I participated in.

There is no question that the public employee unions are the scapegoats dujor in this recession. You only have to read the newspapers and watch TV to see that.

David, the Bell situation and a few others in the area surrounding LA are aberrations–the results of fraud being committed by crooks on unsuspecting constituents who did not understand what was going on under their noses. And, they never voted. The gentlemens’ agreement between the CM and the PC in Bell is criminal.

We could argue these points around and around. I don’t like seeing a group of people that I was involved with for most of my life, accused of plunder when all they have done is get up every day and go to work and perform their job like everyone else who works. I will speak out and defend myself and them for as long as it takes.

“Unions are irrelevant of the pension plans–in fact the high pensions that have everyone in such a frenzy are received by former dept. heads and high level managers–not rank and file workers who are, in some cases, union members.”

To me (my ilk), the problem is not unions per se, but the ability of all public employees to plunder the treasury they are supposed to safeguard. And, it very much starts at the top. The former city manager and police chief of Bell are Exhibits A and B. The later guy adds insult to injury by claiming he was disabled moving out of his office(?!) so that he can avoid the very taxes needed to help pay for his $400K a year public pension.

I did not accuse you of anything. I was simply responding to your question.

If the purpose of the state and local government is to redistribute wealth to the government employees, then I would agree that the “abrogation of the collective bargaining rights of workers all over the State of CA” is not good news.

But, if the purpose of the state and local government is to provide essential services to the citizens (or occupants, if you prefer) of the state and local municipalities, then “the abrogation of the collective bargaining rights of workers all over the State of CA” is very much good news, since otherwise there will be a severe reduction in services that can be provided in order to pay for tens of thousands of spiked pensions out of the general funds.

If by my “ilk” you mean is someone who does not like living in a bankrupt state that already over-taxes its productive citizens yet can no longer provide basic public services such as state parks because of the pie-in-the-sky public employee pension promises (hstad articulates this well in the prior comment), yes, that is my ilk.

Chris – sure blame it on Wall Street – nice! Not on those lousy politicians selling their votes to your union buddies for outrageous pension benefits. What about the the losses to cover for your pensions guarantees, how do you explain that to taxpayers who do not have such guarantees?

If this were the case today, many of the State public pension funds would not be able to accrue additional benefits until they funded their plans up to an 80 or 90% level. Furthermore, no one would be using interest rates of 7% or higher for rate of return assumptions. It’s not allowed that high currently on the private side.

Pension spiking, based on final year of work, not allowed either.

There are more examaples, but you get the drift. The ‘special’ Govt rules lead to the abuse of the system.

I am at a loss as to how to address your accusation, because in all of my years working for a public entity, there was no such plan, to steal from others. My purpose was to serve the public–I did that. I never went to work with a pension in mind. In fact, CalPERS was not present at my employer, when I began in 1967, and there was no SS either. I was there to earn money to help support my family. My employer eventually contracted with CalPERS. To me, it was just a fringe benefit that I was happy to receive. Private sector employees had fringe benefits too, did they not? To be accused of planning to take from the rest of the citizenry is offensive to me, because it is simply not true. From my knowledge, this scapegoating of public employees is very recent, since the global economic meltdown of 2008.

Its sad to see how you and your ilk are all demonizing these public unions. Where unions are involved, there is a collective bargaining process that both the employer and the employees had agreed to abide by. In many of these instances where pension issues were on the ballots, the collective bargaining process has been thwarted–perhaps illegally. So, you will probably be seeing, in some of those districts, money that the voters thought they were saving, will instead be spent on legal fees.

Unions are irrelevant of the pension plans–in fact the high pensions that have everyone in such a frenzy are received by former dept. heads and high level managers–not rank and file workers who are, in some cases, union members.

SeeSaw, I suppose the answer to your question depends on whether you believe the purpose of government is for the government employees to maximize what they can take from the rest of us.