Friday, February 03, 2017

California Public Schools Threatened by Pension Shorages

Calwatchdog reports on California's pension shortages rearing their ugly head again. This time, it's schools that will take the hit:

"Public schools around California are bracing for a crisis driven by skyrocketing worker pension costs that are expected to force districts to divert billions of dollars from classrooms into retirement accounts, education officials said,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The depth of the funding gap became clear to district leaders when they returned from the holiday break: What they contribute to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, will likely double within six years, according to state estimates.”

This situation has actually been with us for some time, as readers here already know. Worker pensions are taking a big bit out of all government services:

"The city of Los Angeles already dedicates 20 percent of its budget for pension obligations, Anaheim 13 percent, Long Beach 11 percent and San Jose as high as 27 percent.”


I have no idea how big a chunk pension costs take from our budgets up here. It's probably safe to say it's about the same. It's also probably safe to say we'll be hearing more pleas for tax increases in future elections for both schools and general government services to make up for shortages. Of course, the public employee unions will keep telling us this isn't a problem.

6 Comments:

At 1:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Del Norte County could have a BIG problem as the workforce is predominately government employees (National Parks, State Parks, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, Corrections, Highway Patrol, plus city and county employees.)

 
At 2:18 PM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

The Santa Rosa Press- Democrat ran a story a couple days ago about Sonoma County schools facing some one or three million dollar deficit, and I don't recall it being because of pensions, although you can bet pensions will add to their misery.

 
At 3:23 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

back in the early 2000s , AT&T had a solution to their ever growing pension budget
they followed employees with 20-25 years or more and FIRED them for the smallest misconduct
i retired first but they sure tried to get me
got 4 of my friends though

 
At 5:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Two points to note:

1. This isn't about teacher pensions, but instead the pensions of other city, state and school district employees. Teachers are covered under a different pension plan.

2. School districts are the focus on this news because they'll be hit the hardest because they are so terribly under-funded to begin with. There is a base assumption at the stat level that schools will augment their paltry budgets with property tax assessments in order to keep their aging buildings from falling apart, keep their computer labs up to date, and so forth. City and state agencies don't deal with that crap. We leave that kind of crappy treatment to the groups that educate our kids. Go figure.

 
At 6:56 AM, Anonymous Rusty said...

FRED... your contact me email fredtyg@sbcglobal.net is not working, permanent fatal errors.

 
At 7:08 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Try using fredtyg@gmail.com

 

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