FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tustin, California, April 30, 2014 Contact: press@calpolicycenter.org Transparent California Releases 2014 CalSTRS Pension Data TUSTIN — Today, TransparentCalifornia.com released 2014 pension records for 256,305 CalSTRS pensioners, received through a series of public records request. Transparent California is California’s largest and most comprehensive database of public sector compensation and is a project of two...

How much debt has accumulated as the State of California and its local K-12 school and community college districts relentlessly borrow money for school construction by selling bonds to investors? No one seems to know. In April 2013, the California Policy Center published a report entitled Calculating California’s Total State and Local Government Debt, which attempted to...

Labor unions take forced fees from 550,000 nonmembers By Jason Hart, April 27, 2015, Watchdog.org You make it, we’ll take it. To keep their jobs, 554,799 American workers were forced last year to pay union agency fees. In the 25 states without right-to-work laws, unions can take mandatory “fair share” or “agency” fees from workers...

Other than school choice, no issue riles the teachers unions more than class-size. A couple of weeks ago, Edunomics Lab, a university-based research center that focuses on “exploring and modeling complex education finance decisions,” released a report in which it claims to have figured out a way to pay some teachers more without taking money...

On January 27th, 2015 Kern County declared a fiscal emergency citing lower tax revenues from oil producers and growing unfunded pension liabilities as the cause. A review of their pension costs and growth of their unfunded liabilities over the past decade indicates the word “growing” is an understatement. A more accurate term would be “soaring”....

Over 40 years ago, California’s Supreme Court recognized that a child’s access to an adequate education – regardless of race, ethnicity or wealth – is a fundamental right of the highest order. In Serrano v. Priest the Court affirmed “education is a major determinant of an individual’s chances for economic and social success in our...

April 2015 Update:  Here’s a documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states. The news is bad, and getting worse. But it doesn’t have to be this way! The state and local government policies that created an unaffordable California can be reversed. PERSONAL INCOME TAX:  Prior to Prop 30 passing...