A couple of years ago, sitting on a panel discussing the recent election and looking at future policy and political topics, I raised the public employee pension issue. A public union representative on the panel dismissed the issue as “old news.”
Not hardly.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times began a series put together in cooperation with CALmatters and Capitol Public Radio on the miscalculations of dramatically increasing public employee pensions that will hit taxpayers with a double whammy: billions of additional dollars billed to taxpayers to pay the exploding costs and reduction of services because money must be diverted to cover pensions.
Rather than old news, the important story was the lead headline in the paper’s Sunday print edition.
The first story delves into the history of SB 400, which sent the public pension costs in an unchecked upward spiral while putting the taxpayers into a deep hole.
The pension issue is not old news—a remedy to correct the problem must emerge.
You can read the Times article written by Jack Dolan here.