"The California Public Employees' Retirement System's union defenders feign shock whenever pension reformers accuse it of "kicking the can down the road" in dealing with the state's mounting pension debt.
It's like the scene from Casablanca, when Captain Louis Renault is absolutely shocked to find gambling going on in a gambling house.
CalPERS is never going to state the obvious: "We know these massive, underfunded pensions are not sustainable, but we're going to do everything possible to push the problem into the future and blame everyone else for the problem." But the pension fund's board might as well have said as much after two actions it took at last week's Sacramento meeting.
...The first action involved the fate of two local agencies that have exited the pension fund because they couldn't afford to keep making their payments.
As California Policy Center previously reported, the tiny Sierra Nevada town of Loyalton in 2013 decided to exit the plan, but then was hammered with a $1.66 million termination fee that it couldn't possibly afford.
The town's entire annual budget is $1 million and it couldn't even make its $3,500 month payments to the fund.
...It's hard to feel too sorry for these struggling cities.
- Do you remember when they warned about the impending disaster if the state legislature passed a 1999 bill, promoted by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, that would retroactively raised pensions across the state by 50 percent?
- Do you remember when city managers angrily resisted union-backed efforts to raise pensions at their city councils?
Read on!
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