How Can Local Elected Officials Control Employee Retirement Costs Employee retirement costs are a growing burden for California governments. As CalPERS and other multi-employer systems reduce their expected rates of return, required employer pension contributions are rising rapidly, usually outpacing revenue growth. As a result, retirement expenditures are crowding out other spending priorities, and, in...

San Diegans voted five years ago this month to switch all new city hires, except police, from pensions to 401(k)-style individual investment plans, becoming one of the first big cities to take the plunge. Jacksonville, Fla., took a bigger step last April, switching all new employees including police and firefighters to 401(k)-style plans. Last week,...

Special from Robb Korinke | California City News It’s no secret the country is more polarized than ever – and polling of local elected officials shows it’s no different among our state’s mayors and councilmembers. As part of the 10th anniversary of CaliforniaCityNews.org, we partnered with the Prime Group, an opinion research firm with offices in Los Angeles...

Twenty-five University of California retirees receive more than $300,000 annually in retirement, the California Policy Center has learned. The information, contained in documents released to CPC through a public records request, comes amidst controversy over excessive compensation at the UC system and revelations of a secret slush fund at the system’s headquarters. The highest paid pensioner is Professor Lewis L. Judd, a UC San Diego Psychiatry professor. He receives an annual pension of $385,765.

Sacramento – Tens of thousands of people marched in hundreds of cities last week as part of something billed as the March for Science. The event, which coincided with Earth Day, was meant to rebuke the Trump administration’s global-warming skepticism and its plan to cut taxpayer funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies...

While the public pension crisis has been an issue on the right for many years, left-wing thinkers show relatively little interest in the issue. When progressives do opine on pensions, they often reject the alarm expressed by conservatives, seeing it as a smokescreen for unneeded austerity or a way to attack the public sector. In...