Merced County pensions may have the lowest funding level of any public pension system in California, a shortfall officials attribute to a big retroactive pension increase for all county employees a decade ago and faulty actuarial work. In the latest annual public pension report from the state controller’s office, Merced County stands out with the lowest level of funding in the last reported year, 54.7 percent in 2010-11.
An artist's rendering of the California bullet train. (Photo: HSR)Dan Richard, the chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority, is a man in the middle. The middle of court fights, the middle of political fights, the middle of a fight over California’s future. “The rest of the developed world has moved energetically to adopt high-speed rail. We will too,” Richard says. He may be right.
OPINION: Recently the Assembly unanimously passed my bill AB 2293. This common sense legislation will clarify insurance coverage plans for transportation network companies (TNC), such as Uber, Lyft and others. My bill also requires important disclosures from TNCs that ensure drivers and all parties are aware of the insurance policy coverage in place. The legislation, AB 2293, passed 71-0 in a unanimous and bipartisan vote and now moves on to the Senate policy committee.
Street art in Santa Barbara., August 2011. Philip Bird OPINION: Since 2003, California’s Governors and the Legislature have allocated $1.1 million annually to the Arts Council, the bare minimum necessary to qualify for a $1 million National Endowment for the Arts grant. This lack of foresight has put California dead last among all 50 states in per capita funding for its arts agency.
The total spending increase needed to get CalSTRS, brought low by mismanagement, back to full funding may be the biggest-dollar scenarios ever presented to a California legislative committee. Legislators were told last week an additional $181.7 billion would be needed for full funding in 20 years. If payments are spread out to ease the budget bite, the additional amount needed to reach full funding in 60 years is a staggering $618 billion.
Getting CalSTRS back to full funding, if rates are steadily increased over the next half dozen years, would take an annual increase reaching more than $5 billion a year by 2020 — about what the state general fund currently spends on UC and CSU combined. (Photo: CalSTRS lobby, Paul Housberg)
A major public pension reform initiative got a mixed cost analysis last week from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. The measure would give state and local governments the option of cutting retirement benefits current workers earn in the future, while preserving benefits already earned through past service.
State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)For the followers of California politics, non-election years usually are yawns. Not so 2013: One would be hard pressed to find a year with more hot-button events fraught with statewide political ramifications. Here’s our roundup of the year’s top tales, a subjective compilation to be sure but one which was fun to put together. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The governor, who has described himself as tight with a buck, set out to prove it before the UC Regents when he said they needed to bite into a “reality sandwich” if they were thinking of getting more than a 5 percent hike in state funds. The increase Brown granted in this year’s budget was relatively modest but desperately needed to fill some gaps for UC.
In 2013, the Legislature and the Governor agreed to a restrained state budget for 2013–14, and our forecast of state tax revenue collections has increased since last year. Accordingly, we now find that California’s state budget situation is even more promising than we projected one year ago.