CalPERS, the state pension system, has rigged state law – indeed the very state constitution — to create ever-ballooning public employee pensions. The heart of this special interest is CalPERS’ board. Its members are labor-friendly, and they often lack financial expertise.
Now a freshman Assemblyman, Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, has introduced a bill to revive Gov. Jerry’s Brown’s proposal to restructure the CalPERS board, Calpensions reports.
The proposal ”which needs voter approval because of a labor-backed initiative in 1992, would double the number of gubernatorial appointees to six, matching the number of labor representatives,” the article says.
“In the past, the lack of independence and financial sophistication on public retirement boards has contributed to unaffordable pension benefit increases,” said the 12-point pension reform proposed by Brown in October 2011.”
That’s putting it mildly. CalPERS sponsored 1999 legislation that gave state workers a major retroactive pension increase. Highway Patrol pensions increased 50 percent. That became the brass ring wanted by all unions, state and local.
I encourage you to read this Calpensions article. This is your chance to better understand the unseen hand that helped push Stockton to bankruptcy. The public in general and Stocktonians in particular need to support any law that replaces the pro-labor hacks on CalPERS’ board with independent, fiscally savvy leaders who give retirees fair pensions but don’t rack up huge debt for the state or cities like Stockton.
