So says Dan the Man at the Sacramento Bee.
“The plan is mostly fluff, such as eliminating “spiking,” the buying of “airtime” to boost pensions, and pensions for felons, and placing a theoretical cap on salaries qualifying for defined-benefit pensions that will affect only a tiny number of those on the public payroll,” Dan Walters writes.
He also says why this feeble stab at depserately needed reform is tragic.
“… the system is unsustainable, based on pie-in-the-sky assumptions of pension fund earnings and gobbling up ever-larger shares of state and local budgets and thus compelling offsetting reductions in vital services.”
Exactly. It’s all going to come crashing down around our ears eventually.
But fobbing that off onto our children, while dismayingly expedient, is really not the worst of it. The worst will be years in which pensions eat up funding for police on the street, firefighters, libraries, road maintenance, downtown revival, and the thousand other budget items that translate to the quality of life in a city. All because our leaders, state and local, lack spine and calculators.
