Posts Tagged: budgets

Brown leaves with pension reform pending

Gov. Jerry Brown discusses public pension issues at a Capitol budget briefing for reporters. (Photo: AP/Rich Pendroncelli, via calpensions.com)

by ED MENDEL posted 12.31.2018

Gov. Brown leaves office next week with a smaller cost-cutting pension reform than he wanted. But after he’s gone, union challenges to minor parts of his reform pending in the state Supreme Court may open the door to big changes. The main parts of Brown’s reform add several years to retirement ages and make some employees pay more for their pensions.

Counties, state clash over ‘PILT’

Pfeiffer Beach at the mouth of the Big Sur River in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. View looking upriver from the beach, with Cupressus macrocarpa trees. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

by JOHN HOWARD posted 03.25.2014

Decades ago, California began taking over the management of thousands of acres of rural wildlands in dozens of counties across the state. But over the years a problem arose: With the state in control, some counties were cut out of the money that they otherwise would have collected from property taxes. The state had promised to compensate the counties for the lost revenue by making payments in lieu of taxes.

OPINION: Public employees have shown they are willing to do their part to help balance government budgets. We may not have liked the pension system overhaul Governor Brown signed in 2012, but once it became law our union leaders helped to implement the changes, which will amount to a reduction of more than $77 billion to public workers’ retirement and health care benefits.

An $8 million pension bond was approved last week by voters in Piedmont, a small well-to-do city completely surrounded by deep-in-debt Oakland, originator of the pension bond that has figured in the Stockton, San Bernardino and Detroit bankruptcies. (Photo: City of Fremont