A rational evaluation of California’s public pension system leads to this conclusion: the system is helping send California into bankruptcy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agrees. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa believes the city’s pension system also is unsustainable. But true to form, union officials adamantly oppose reforming a system that is so ridiculously generous it is laughable. Except that it’s terribly serious. Sadly, this is more evidence that once a government entity doles out benefits, it is nearly impossible to roll it back. From the LA Times (emphasis is mine):
The mayor and the governor, appearing at separate events, said the retirement packages — which allow some public employees to stop working at age 50 with a pension nearly equal to their entire salary — are more generous than taxpayers can afford.
“The single biggest threat to our fiscal health and California’s future is our public pension system,” Schwarzenegger said at a Capitol news conference, declaring the growing costs a “crisis.”
“Here in Sacramento, pension reform must be our No. 1 priority,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Villaraigosa declared in Los Angeles that the city’s “pension system is no longer sustainable.”
Retirement benefit costs will consume 19% of the city’s general fund budget in the coming fiscal year, he said.
So how do union officials respond? (again, emphasis is mine)
Organized labor groups, which have close ties to the Democrats who control the Legislature, have vowed to continue to aggressively fight the governor’s efforts to roll back pension benefits.
“This is just the governor continuing to distort the actual facts on what the real situation is,” said Dave Low, assistant government relations director for the California School Employees Assn. “It is our opinion that pension systems are not in dire straits.”
Stunning.
