Did CalPERS Fail to Disclose Costs of Historic Bump in Pension Benefits?

By Edward Ring
10/26/2017
How would you feel if someone told you they’d just increased your retirement benefit by 50%, took five years off the age you’d have to be when you could retire and collect this benefit, and then told you there would be almost no additional cost because the stock market was roaring? In California, that’s what...

TAGS: California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS, Pacific Grove, SB 400

Court Pension Decision Weakens ‘California Rule’

By Ed Mendel
08/22/2016
The one thing some pension reformers say is needed to cut the cost of unaffordable public pensions: give current workers a less costly retirement benefit for work done in the future, while protecting pension amounts already earned. It’s allowed in the remaining private-sector pensions. But California is one of about a dozen states that have...

TAGS: "California Rule", California Public Employees Retirement System, San Jose mayor Chuck Reed, SB 400, unfunded liability

The Mechanics of Pension Reform – State Actions

By John Moore
12/22/2015
Part 1 of 2… Since the passage of SB 400, adopted by the California Legislature in 1999 (93 for, 7 against), pension deficits have steadily grown in California. According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, as of the end of 2015, credible estimates of the total unfunded pension obligations owed by California’s state and other...

TAGS: government unions, pension reform, SB 400

Reports on Public Insolvency Incomplete Without Employee Compensation Data

By Edward Ring
09/24/2013
On Sept. 23rd the New York Times published an in-depth report on how the cost of public employee pensions is causing budget challenges in San Jose, California. Entitled “Struggling, San Jose Tests a Way to Cut Benefits,” this article ran over 1,500 words and was filled with examples of city workers who are struggling financially....

TAGS: New York Times, SB 400

Reforming Public Sector Unions and Public Sector Pensions is NOT “Anti-Worker”

By Edward Ring
05/28/2013
An incoming email responding to last week’s UnionWatch editorial “Los Angeles Police Union Attacks CPPC Study” included the following statement: “While you profess not to dislike public employees, it is clear that you disliking public employee unions.  Interesting—so you might like a public employee or two individually, you just dislike when those individuals organize to...

TAGS: California Teachers Association, pension reform, public sector unions, SB 400