A new view on California public pension reform

By Wayne Lusvardi | Cal Watchdog

Almost everyone acknowledges that California’s public pension system needs reform. Gov. Jerry Brown brought up reform in his his Jan. 2014 budget proposal for fiscal year 2014-15, which begins on July 1:

“Future liabilities — to schools, public employees’ pensions and retirement health benefits, infrastructure debt, deferred maintenance, and unemployment insurance — total $355 billion. These liabilities were built up over decades, and likewise, it will take decades to pay them off.”

Now, a new view on fixing the pensions comes from Alexander “Sasha” Volokh, a professor at the Emory University Law School in Atlanta.

Volokh has been writing a series of “white papers” for the Federalist Society on public pension and public employee compensation (see here and here). The Federalist Society is a group of conservatives and libertarians that favors decentralized government and local control.

In his recent white paper, “Can We Fix the ‘California Rule’ for Public Employee Pensions?” he moves from descriptions to prescriptions for fixing the state’s perpetual deficit spending on pensions.

at Cal Watchdog.

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