According to a new website run by California State Auditor Elaine Howle and her staff, the dozen most populated cities in California all have significant fiscal problems and will be forced into major adjustments in coming years.

Eleven of the cities – Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach, Bakersfield, Anaheim, Santa Ana and Riverside – face what Howle classified as moderate risk. One – Oakland – was seen as a high risk.

All 12 of the cities face considerable stress from the rising cost of pensions. Several – especially Los Angeles – also have vast unfunded health care obligations for their retirees. 

Howle’s findings were depicted as surprising in a Sacramento Bee analysis, which focused on the health of the state economy and the low unemployment rate. But government finance experts have long warned that California’s cities – which have seen the cost of post-employment benefits roughly triple over the last 30 years – are in a far worse position to deal with pension bills that the state and counties. That’s because total employee compensation takes up a much bigger chunk of city budgets.

Howle warns cities to prepare for recession

At a news conference introducing the website, Howle said a primary goal was making sure that both local officials and residents of each city would use her office’s analysis to prepare for a possible economic downturn. Even a mild recession is likely to reduce revenue that cities get from sales and hotel taxes and from development permitting.

“If some of these [cities’] costs continue to go up and these cities aren’t prepared for them, they will have to cut services in order to pay pensions, to pay for benefits, to pay for the debts that some of the cities have taken on,” Howle said, according to the Sacramento Bee. She specifically said nearly half the cities will struggle to meet their steadily increasing payments to CalPERS.

Rankings on the website are based on the 2016-17 fiscal year, with a focus on each city’s pension obligations, pension funding, pension costs, anticipated future pension costs, retiree health care expenses, debt burden, liquidity, general fund reserves and revenue trends.

Overall, 18 cities were said to be at high risk overall, 236 at moderate risk and 217 cities at low risk. Compton – which has not produced an audited overview of its finances in five years – was judged to be in the worst shape, followed by Atwater and Blythe. 

The other cities listed at being high-risk: Lindsay, Calexico, San Fernando, El Cerrito, San Gabriel, Maywood, Monrovia, Vernon, Richmond, Ione, Del Ray Oaks, Maryville, West Covina and La Habra.

Among the cities found to be in the best shape: Rancho Cucamonga, Chino Hills, Poway, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage, La Quinta and Mountain View.

The fact that 2-year-old information was being presented by the auditor as a snapshot of cities’ current fiscal health prompted criticism from the League of California Cities.

“It doesn’t tell the story of now, and so we’re not really clear on how helpful this dashboard is to the public, to the cities or basically anybody,” Jill Oviatt, director of communications and marketing for the league, told the Bee. She likened Howle’s rankings to “a data dump that’s void of context and analysis.”

Four years after the state Legislature passed a bailout of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System that will nearly double annual direct contributions to the giant pension fund, a newly released internal report raises the prospect that the infusion of extra dollars may not protect CalSTRS from future disaster.

The 2014 changes in funding required districts to more than double their CalSTRS contributions, phasing in an increase from 8.25 percent of teacher pay in 2013-14 to 19.1 percent in 2020-21. Individual teachers and the state government also were required to pay more. But about 70 percent of the new funding – which will push total annual contributions from nearly $6 billion in 2013-14 to $11 billion in 2021 – is coming from districts.

The assumption in 2014 was that this extra funding was so significant that CalSTRS’ long-term viability was assured. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office billed the hikes as a “major state accomplishment.”

On Nov. 8, however, the CalSTRS board was presented with a “risk report” that included both upbeat and gloomy scenarios. As Ed Mendel reported on the Calpensions website, the report found that if investment returns met their 7 percent target, CalSTRS’ retirement liabilities would be 100 percent funded by 2046 – a vast improvement on the present 70 percent.

50% chance fund hits point of no return threshold

But whether a 7 percent projected annual return is reasonable isn’t just questioned by pension watchdogs like Stanford professor Joe Nation and former Schwarzenegger policy adviser David Crane. CalSTRS’ number crunchers concluded that “even with the new rate increases, there is still a 50 percent probability that the CalSTRS funding level will drop below 50 percent in the next 30 years, according to 5,000 simulations based on the current asset allocation,” Mendel reported. Going below the 50 percent threshold is considered by many pension experts the point of no return, with little prospect that stricken retirement funds could ever rebound.

The problem for CalSTRS isn’t just consistently hitting or surpassing the 7 percent annual return goal. It’s that as few as one or two bad years of returns have a compound effect on long-term liabilities. The weak performances by CalSTRS and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System when the Great Recession hit more than a decade ago still haunt the funds, which are the two largest government pension agencies in the U.S. CalSTRS went from being 100 percent funded in October 2007 to 60 percent funded in March 2009, according to a Calpensions report.

CalSTRS’ and CalPERS’ grim numbers are a big reason why state Democrats are pushing for major changes in Proposition 13, the state’s landmark 1978 measure capping property tax increases at 2 percent a year. An initiative ending the protection for commercial and industrial properties will be on the 2020 state ballot and has the potential to generate $11 billion in new revenue a year.

School districts growing desperate over budgets

It may be a tough sell in an era in which the state has run surpluses for several years – including a $15.8 billion windfall expected in fiscal 2019-2020. But the “split roll” change sought for Proposition 13 reflects in many ways the deep concerns in the education establishment that the cost of the 2014 CalSTRS bailout is making it increasingly difficult for school districts to craft balanced budgets.

As CalWatchdog reported Oct. 1, one reason that the Legislature adopted new rules on permissible levels of lead in school drinking water that some health experts thought didn’t go nearly far enough was that the California School Boards Association worried that tougher standards would have been far more costly. The new standards for state schools were seen as still leaving students at risk of developing the severe cognitive and behavioral problems associated with children and adolescents being exposed to lead.

As of July, CalSTRS had $224 billion in assets. It would need to have $320 billion in hand to be considered fully funded.

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.

After reports of problems with lead contamination of water at schools around California, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a

The measure by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, mandates that every school test one to five water outlets for the presence of lead. If any of the tests shows over 15 parts of lead per billion, the parents or guardians of students must be notified. Young people exposed to lead can suffer permanent problems – sometimes extreme – with cognitive development and behavior.

Given the attention paid to the national scandal over dangerous water in Flint, Michigan, the state law came as a relief to concerned parents, school officials and health agencies. But a comprehensive new analysis by the EdSource website suggests this relief may be premature.

The key issue is whether the 15 parts per billion standard, which is recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is strict enough to protect students’ health. The American Academy of Pediatrics considers that standard to be so weak that it puts young people at risk. The academy calls for a maximum of 1 parts per billion.

Pediatricians say federal standard is risky

“We know there is no safe lead level,” Dr. Jennifer Lowry, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health, told EdSource. “Schools ought to work to remove that source of lead for these kids.”

Experts were also sharply critical of the California law because it didn’t require all sources of water to be tested at every school. While sometimes lead contamination is system-wide – as seen in large parts of Flint in recent years – a single corroded pipe, faucet or other plumbing fixture can be responsible for lead contamination.

Gonzalez Fletcher told EdSource she supports strengthening the law and said the 15-parts-per-billion standard was agreed on to gain enough support so her bill would pass. The California School Boards Association worried that a tougher standard could be financially onerous for school districts.

The CSBA’s concerns may seem dubious, given that schools have enjoyed large increases in funding in recent years, thanks to a strong economy and Proposition 98 – a 1988 state law mandating that public education get roughly 40 percent of state revenue. But every school district is likely to face at least one and more likely two fiscal crises in coming years.

School districts face fiscal double-whammy

The first is the immense cost of the 2014 California State Teachers’ Retirement System bailout. The great majority of the cost – 70 percent – is borne by districts, which face a phased-in increase of CalSTRS contributions, going from 8.25 percent of pay in 2013-14 to 19.1 percent in 2020-21. In many districts, increased state funding due to healthy revenue gains has been largely used for these new pension bills. By 2020-21, when the final increase takes effect, most school districts are likely to have compensation costs eating up 90 percent or more of their general operating budgets.

The second crisis is not an absolute certainty, just highly likely. That crisis is a recession that sends state revenue plunging. Because California is so reliant on the income taxes paid by the very wealthy, the Great Recession a decade ago prompted a 20 percent drop in revenue and a corresponding reduction in state funding for public education.

That is why in recent years that Gov. Brown worked so hard to get the Legislature to strongly increase state fiscal reserves. By summer 2019, the state could have $13.5 billion in hand, according to an analysis earlier this year. But given that Brown has warned that a recession could wipe out $55 billion in revenue over a three-year span, these “rainy day” funds won’t go that far in helping schools.

Against this backdrop, the next governor, state lawmakers and education officials face a difficult calculus next year: how tight a standard for lead in schools are they willing to set with such a gloomy budget picture.

In the last testing results made available by the state, 150 schools – or 4 percent of those surveyed – had one or more more water outlets with lead levels over 15 parts per billion. Just under 25 percent of schools had lead levels over 5 parts per billion – hinting at how costly it would be if the state went to a tougher standard.

They presume Brown is nervous about the capital-gains revenue rollercoaster as well as the revenue lost when Proposition 30’s temporary sales tax hike expires at the end of 2016 and when its temporary income tax hike expires at the end of 2018. Their solution is to seek to extend the tax hikes, which generated $6.2 billion in fiscal 2013-14.

But another jolt is on the horizon: the cost of the CalSTRS bailout enacted last year, which will ramp up contributions annually for the next six years. The full phase-in is far off. But with 90 percent of the eventual $5 billion annual cost borne by state taxpayers — 20 percent directly and 70 percent indirectly, paid by state-funded local school districts — the bailout tab had Moody’s investor service worried last summer, before it even took effect:

Managing rising pension costs will prove challenging over time because CalSTRS rate increases are back-loaded. School districts face future budgetary stress not only from rising pension costs but from salary and benefit expenditures and programmatic priorities. Further, school districts have minimal revenue flexibility. … Rising pension costs will pressure financial operations and may cause a deterioration in credit quality for some school districts.

LAUSD faces $1.1 billion in new costs in 2020-21

And the California Department of Education’s warnings to local school districts to prepare for a difficult era as the CalSTRS bailout is phased in show that issue is very much on the radar of the Brown administration.

Los Angeles Unified could be near a teachers strike because UTLA rejects the district’s offer of a 5 percent raise as inadequate in a time of healthier revenue. But L.A. Unified leaders emphasize that they face a $1.1 billion bigger pension bill in 2020-21 than the district now pays and have been surprisingly resolute, given the UTLA’s ability to target and defeat board incumbents who are independent.

In the bigger picture, the U-T San Diego reported some districts see the budget problems posed by bailout costs as impossible to address:

Officials in districts throughout California are talking about forming a coalition to explore ways to fix the teacher retirement system without cutting into their own school programs.

As the pension contributions grow, “the things you want and need for educational purposes will take a second seat to funding this retirement system, or paying for utility bills,” said Gary Hamels, assistant superintendent in charge of business services with San Marcos Unified School District.

“It’s going to hit the fan because you’ll have to make a decision — I have to pay this so you can’t buy that,” Hamels said. “We’ll have a situation where there’s demand for some academic improvement but this is where the money is going first.”

CTA and CFT officials have touted renewing the temporary sales and income tax hikes for months. So far, the unions have been quiet about doing anything to address the fiscal turmoil looming in local school districts because of the cost of the pension bailout.

School districts preparing long-term budget analyses are beginning to realize what they face. This is from the U-T San Diego:

Administrators say they’re at a loss for how they’ll come up with the cash, which for some districts could be tens of millions per year. …

Some school districts in San Diego County highlighted the sticker shock in so-called “interim midyear” budget reports released this month that show escalating contributions from teachers, school districts and even the state as a way to dig the teachers’ retirement fund out of debt over the next several years.

Administrators said that in the coming fiscal year, they may be faced with tough decisions to cut instructional programs, cut professional development or delay technology infrastructure improvements at the expense of paying their share of unfunded pension liabilities — totaling $74 billion statewide.

Officials in districts throughout California are talking about forming a coalition to explore ways to fix the teacher retirement system without cutting into their own school programs.

Coming: The CTA, CFT ‘sequester’

That coalition is sure to end up seeking refuge in new money from the state general fund. The scenario outlined in Cal Watchdog last May looks more likely than ever:

[We will see] perpetual junkyard-dog budget fights in which the CTA and CFT — determined to grab every last dollar to maintain the status quo of teacher pay raises — fight constantly over funding with every competing lobby or interest group.

Why? Because the bailout is going to cost so much, and in the zero-sum game of state budgeting, the question is whether the cost is absorbed in the larger K-12 state budget — or out of the hides of other state programs. … 

The CTA and the CFT didn’t achieve their dominance of Sacramento by playing nice. Covering the cost of the CalSTRS bailout going forward is going to be the Sacramento version of the federal budget sequester for non-education budget categories. Spending on just about everything but  K-12 is going to be curtailed.

Of course, we’ll also see redoubled efforts to raise taxes and make “temporary” hikes permanent. But the day in which the Maviglios of the world could pretend the pension crisis was exaggerated or no big deal will soon be history. Pretty soon the pain is going to be shared by all users of California government services and programs outside of K-12.

Pension tsunami? More like wrecking ball

I wrote more about the coming epic budget battles — the war of all against all — here:

Practically everything in district budgets besides employee compensation will take a huge hit, with less money for classrooms, teacher training and to pay off bonds for construction and technology projects.

This is inevitable when 85 percent or more of school district operating budgets already go toward pay and benefits, and a huge new bill comes along. Gary Hamels, a San Marcos Unified official, said “the things you want and need for educational purposes will take a second seat to funding this retirement system, or paying for utility bills.”

The pension crisis has been likened to an oncoming tsunami. With local schools, it will be more like a wrecking ball — even if temporary state sales and income tax hikes are extended.

Happy New Year!

The California Teachers Association has spent years depicting complaints about the costs of pensions as being driven not by, you know, math — but by the evil agenda of those doing the criticizing. The CTA routinely characterizes pension reformers as people who are somehow doing the 1 percenters’ bidding by torturing the middle class. If you are a politician or a public figure of any kind, unless your name is Jerry Brown, you don’t get to question pension red ink in the Golden State without being attacked personally.

So guess who else is worried about pension costs? The CTA’s parent group, the National Education Association. And it’s been worried for a long time about being overwhelmed by the ever-growing tab for its defined-benefits program — since at least 2007. The excellent @ReasonReform Twitter feed pointed me to this item by Mike Antonucci on the Intercepts blog, which monitors teacher unions:

“Almost exactly seven years ago, NEA found itself in a dispute with its retired employees because it was failing to fully fund its pension liabilities. The retirees received the support of the working staffers, and there were plans to picket the union’s Representative Assembly in Philadelphia that year.

“Faced with an embarrassing public relations situation, the union agreed to reach 100% funding of its obligations by 2021.

“After a recession, a weak recovery and unprecedented membership losses, NEA is in a bit of a bind fulfilling that promise. In 2010, it sought pension relief from Congress, bewailing how difficult it was to fund its defined benefit plans under current law. NEA government relations director Kim Anderson sent a letter to the House detailing the problems:

“‘And it is not just the plans that are jeopardized by this funding crisis:  many of NEA’s affiliated associations are being forced to postpone, curtail, or eliminate regular services, staffing, and capital improvements, often on top of increases in member dues. This is because, absent relief, the average NEA affiliate is facing the immediate obligation to make funding contributions equal to 37 percent of its payroll, just to maintain its defined benefit pension plan.'”

“With membership still falling and national dues levels stagnant, it seems NEA is trying to renegotiate that 2021 deadline.”

Join the club, NEA, join the club. As Antonucci writes …

“All of this was entirely predictable and, like state governments, NEA keeps hoping that some external force will make the impending catastrophe go away. So stalling is the preferred tactic.”

I’m going to try to get details on how the CTA’s internal pension plan is doing. Should be fun.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — The state’s Legislative Analyst released another stinging report last week showing the California State Teachers’ Retirement System suffers $73 billion of unfunded pension debt. But CalSTRS is using doubtful figures to minimize the billions in debt.

As with most systems managed by the state of California, the pension rate of return practice is at odds with reality, as are the contribution rates by state employees.

CalSTRS is not accounting for expenses it should, instead pushing expenses off into the future. This is what creates the unfunded liability. But this cannot go on indefinitely.

The numbers published in the LAO study are not new, and definitely not the result of the 2008 recession, as some say. “A couple of years ago that annual contribution need was $3.5 billion,” said Jack Dean, the publisher of PensionTsunami.com. “The 2008 recession only exposed the debt — it made it more dramatic.”

Dean said California’s pension debt is like when a tsunami hits — the winds suck the ocean water way out, exposing everything on the ocean floor. Then a massive wave comes in, crashes, and destroys everything.  “The oncoming wave of public pension debt is even bigger than it seems,” the Pension Tsunami website says.

But as the California Taxpayers Association reported, “The retirement system’s defined-benefit program was fully funded in 1998. Then, under Governor Gray Davis, the state increased member benefits and reduced state contributions. By 2003, the unfunded liability was $23 billion.” That was well before the recession struck in 2007-08.

Money was promised that was just not in the fund. And the rate of return is suspect.

Pension math is ‘New Math’

“Discount rates, or investment rates of return, have a substantial impact on pension system funded status, defined as the ratio of assets to liabilities,” Stanford Professor Joe Nation found in his 2011 study, “Pension Math.” “Generally, pension systems strive for a funded status of 100 percent over the long term. At a 6.2 percent discount rate, equal to a 100-year rate of return for a hypothetical mix of equities and fixed income investments, the funded status for CalPERS [the California Public Employees’ Retirement System] is 58.3 percent. At the same rate, the funded status for CalSTRS is 60.6 percent; it is 72.0 percent for UCRP [the University of California Retirement Plan]. Even at a 7.75 percent discount rate, the funded status for CalPERS and CalSTRS remains below 80 percent. Private-sector pension plans are labeled ‘at risk’ if their funded status falls below 80 percent.”

Nation correctly identified solutions to the pension crisis that would include revenue increases and reforms to public employee pension systems. But both solutions are highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

“Revenue increases are unlikely to be approved absent pension reforms,” Nation wrote in the study. “Required pension system reforms include benefit reductions, such as prospective reductions for current employees, greater cost sharing, and governance reforms, particularly changes in pension system accounting methods and assumptions.” This is also quite unlikely because it is politically unfeasible.

The LAO explained just how the CalSTRS pension system works:

“For many decades, CalSTRS has administered its main pension program, which (1) receives contributions from members, school and community college districts, and the state; (2) invests those contributions; and (3) uses its assets to provide a specific monthly pension benefit to retirees and their beneficiaries. Retirement programs of this kind are known as Defined Benefit programs.

“Estimated $5.7 Billion of Contributions in 2012-13. In 2012-13, school and community college district employees, districts, and the state are expected to contribute a total amount of $5.7 billion to CalSTRS. Contribution rates set in current law are as follows:

“* Employees ($2.1 Billion). Employees contribute 8 percent of their pay to CalSTRS’ DB Program.

“* Districts ($2.2 Billion). Districts contribute 8.25 percent of payroll to the DB Program.

“* State ($1.4 Billion). The state currently pays about 5 percent of teacher payroll (measured on a two-year lag) to the DB Program and a companion program—the Supplemental Benefit Maintenance Account—combined. (This percentage will grow slightly in future years, but not enough to address a substantial part of CalSTRS’ funding problem.)”

The worse news

According to the CalSTRS actuary, the fund’s defined-benefit program is estimated to deplete its assets by 2044.

The LAO recommended restoring solvency to the CalSTRS retirement system before repaying some obligations in Gov. Jerry Brown’s “wall of debt,” yet more money the state owes. The LAO urged the Legislature to begin additional funding by 2014-15, and even more interestingly, recommended shifting funding for the CalSTRS program to teachers and local school districts.

Yet if California’s statewide pension systems are any benchmark, the funded ratio for the aggregated 24 statewide systems is 53.6 percent, as of June 2011, according to Nation’s study.

And the unfunded liability for the 24 systems is $135.7 billion.

Just as with CalPERS and CalSTRS, “[T]he 24 systems discount their liabilities at an expected rate of return, typically 7.75 percent,” Nation found. That number since has been dropped a little, to 7.5 percent. “This practice is at odds with that used in the private sector, and it is also at odds with standard practice in economics, which holds that pension liabilities are full-recourse obligations that must be paid without regard to the performance of pension fund investments. As such, each of the systems substantially understates liabilities and overstates funded ratios.”

Private sector funds generally expect only about 4 to 5 percent annual growth, at most. The state’s pension tsunami is rolling in and is just off shore.

A new Field Poll shows that Californians back unions — but want pensions rolled back.

As often is the case, the results are contradictory. It’s immense union power that, over the past 12 years, spiked pensions to unsustainable levels. There simply is no way state and local governments can function without large reductions in pension payments.

Voters statewide in 2009 and 2010 rejected tax increases. If tax increases are on a June ballot, voters likely will reject them, too.

There’s a reason why Jack Dean calls it a Pension Tsunami. The earthquake already has occurred. The wave is about to wash away your fishing village. You’re running as fast as you can inland from your boat on the dock. You can hold an election among your fellow villagers, as all of you keep running, on whether or not the wave will carry you away. But you know the wave will wash you away anyway.

Here’s the Field Poll summary from the Bee:

California voters don’t have a problem with unions, but they’re not so keen on public employee pensions promoted by organized labor, according to a new Field Poll.

Nearly half of registered voters – 46 percent – believe unions do more good than harm, while only 35 percent believe the opposite.

But strong majorities support capping public pensions, increasing what government workers pay toward their benefits and hiking their minimum retirement age. And by a narrow majority, they support a state government commission’s controversial idea to alter pension formulas for current employees.

“Public pensions are now seen as too generous,” said poll director Mark DiCamillo.

Reports about pay and pension abuses in Bell, University of California professors’ complaints about their six-figure pension terms and last month’s Little Hoover Commission report that concluded retirement obligations are “crushing” state and local government all fuel that perception, DiCamillo said.