Nine months after a League of California Cities report warned that pension costs were increasingly unsustainable, more than 100 local governments in the Golden State are asking voters for tax hikes on Nov. 6 – which Bond Buyer says is nearly double the record of 56 set in November 2016.

The Nov. 6 measures are on top of 36 city and county taxes that went before voters in the June 2018 primary.

Historically, local hikes in sales and hotel taxes are approved at least 60 percent of the time in California. They’re generally linked to a specific local need – not growing labor costs. With CalPERS’ bills to local governments on track to double from 2015 to 2025, such claims would seem dubious this election year.

Nevertheless – aware that voters likely would be cool to the idea of raising taxes to pay for pensions far more generous than those in the private sector – even now, many local elected leaders depict the hikes as necessary to pay for public safety or for fixing potholes and longer library hours.

Local officials assert hikes are about adding services

In the lead-up to the June primary, virtually the entire city leadership ranks in Chula Vista campaigned for a half-cent sales tax hike on the grounds that it was crucial to adding dozens of badly needed police officers and firefighters.

The tactic worked as Chula Vistans backed the increase. But city leaders’ claims of a coming public-safety hiring spree were impossible to square with the numbers from the city’s budget office. In April, it warned of “bleak” times ahead for San Diego County’s second-largest city, including an annual structural deficit that could reach $26.6 million by 2023 – with surging pension bills mostly to blame.

In Santa Ana, where voters are being asked to raise sales taxes by 1.5 percentage points on Nov. 6, the campaign for the tax hike rarely mentions pension costs.

But once again, a city bureaucrat framed the tax hike in more candid fashion.

“We’re not immune to the labor cost increases that are occurring throughout the state of California and throughout the country. We need to be able to provide additional services to the community. The question before the voters is what level of services do they want from their government?” Jorge Garcia, a top aide in the Santa Ana city manager’s office, told Bond Buyer.

Santa Ana’s pension bill is expected to go from $45.1 million in 2017-2018 to $81.2 million by 2022-2023 – an 80 percent increase.

‘The cause of this point-blank is CalPERS’

But some politicians have no patience with misleading narratives. “The cause of this point-blank is CalPERS and our pension fund,” Lodi Councilwoman JoAnne Mounce said in June when the Lodi City Council decided to put a half-cent sales tax on the Nov. 6 ballot.

As the League of California Cities reported in January, “With local pension costs outstripping revenue growth, many cites face difficult choices that will be compounded in the next recession. Under current law, cities have two choices – attempt to increase revenue or reduce services.”

The severity of the pension crisis is illustrated by the fact that it is sharply worsening in a period in which there is often seemingly good news on the fiscal front.

State revenue is expected to go up in 2018-19 for a 10th straight year.

County assessors report a 6.5 percent increase in property taxes this year. That’s triple the rate of inflation and comes even with Proposition 13 preventing increases of more than 2 percent on homes, businesses and other properties that didn’t change hands.

In July, CalPERS announced a second straight year of above-average earnings on its investment portfolio, which rose in value to $357 billion.

This prompted a news release from a top state union leader disputing talk of CalPERS’ poor health.

“While it’s important not to focus on one-year returns, these returns continue the long-term trend of CalPERS performing above or near its long-term discount rates and once again defying the sky-is-falling predictions of system critics,” wrote Dave Low, executive director of the California School Employees Association.

But despite the good returns, as of July, CalPERS only had 71 percent of funds needed to pay for its long-term financial liabilities, the Sacramento Bee reported. That’s far below the 80 percent funding level that is considered the absolute minimum for a healthy pension system.

Instead of calling for the governor and the Legislature to sharply increase its annual payments to the funds responsible for these liabilities, Taylor called for relatively slight increases phased in for years — increases that are far short of what an actuary would recommend.

It’s as if a family declared its finances to be in great shape so long as one ignored the $500,000 in credit-card debts.

What makes the LAO’s current insanity so tough to figure out? The fact that at other times, the LAO makes powerful arguments that completely counter the budget assertions Taylor offered last month.

LAO: CalSTRS’ debt much worse than Brown’s ‘wall of debt’

For one example, this is from Ed Mendel’s piece on Calpensions.com in March of this year:

“The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office yesterday recommended that the Legislature adopt a plan to fully fund CalSTRS in 30 years — an estimated cost of $4.5 billion a year, a hefty addition to current annual contributions totaling $5.7 billion. …

“… after years of ignoring a growing CalSTRS debt … the Assembly and Senate public employee retirement committees held a joint hearing yesterday on proposed solutions requested by a Senate resolution last year.

“Ryan Miller of the Legislative Analyst’s Office told the committee that the unfunded liability of the California StateTeachers Retirement System, a century old this year, ‘may be the state’s most difficult fiscal challenge.’

“The analyst said the CalSTRS unfunded liability is twice the size of what Gov. Brown calls ‘the wall of debt’ from years of budgetary borrowing. The governor’s proposed budget spends $56 billion on K-12 funding under the Proposition 98 guarantee.”

Let’s contrast that with what Mac Taylor said three weeks ago in Sacramento at a legislative hearing.

“’The state’s budgetary condition is stronger than at any point in the past decade. … The state’s structural deficit – in which ongoing spending commitments were greater than projected revenues – is no more.’”

Does LAO staffer have a bloody lip?

Huh? So paying the actuarial minimum for retirement benefits that are contractually guaranteed and protected by a welter of state laws isn’t a “spending commitment”?

What’s going on in Sacramento? Is there something in the Capitol water supply? Psilocybin, perhaps?

I wonder how the LAO staffer who correctly warned the Legislature about CalSTRS’ horrible finances in March deals with his boss’s denial and declining math skills. Does he have to bite his lip to keep quiet when Mac talks of budget surpluses as far as the eye can see? Does he chant “om” to maintain his mental equilibrium? Does he furtively scan the jobs.ca.gov site so he can get away from the Lunatic Analyst’s Office?

I’m not being completely facetious here at all. This was the official position of the LAO when the staff was doing the talking, not the boss:

“If the state’s current $1.4 billion annual contribution to CalSTRS were combined with the $4.5 billion additional contribution that may be necessary to achieve full funding in 30 years, the sum would exceed state spending on the University of California and California State University systems combined. The additional CalSTRS contribution alone would represent about one-half of state corrections spending.”

Now the LAO’s position has become “the state’s structural deficit … is no more.”

Wow. And a whole bunch of other less-family-friendly exclamations.