California's $500-billion pension time bomb
The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage...

How did we get here? The answer is simple: For decades -- and without voter consent -- state leaders have been issuing billions of dollars of debt in the form of unfunded pension and healthcare promises, then gaming accounting rules in order to understate the size of those promises.

As we saw during the recent financial crisis, hiding debt is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, General Motors did something similar to obscure the true cost of its retirement promises. Through aggressive accounting, for a while it, too, got away with making pension contributions that were a fraction of what it really needed to make, thereby reporting better earnings than was truly the case.

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NCT Pension Forum
Officials with a county watchdog group asked taxpayers Wednesday to contact their city officials and request reform for municipalities' generous pension plans.

EUC Blog Pension Reform Discussion
...SDCTA has lots of resources and papers on their web site, but I'll sum up the presentation here. Encinitas city employees can retire at 55 and get paid essentially a full salary for as long as they live. That is completely out of line with private-sector, real-world benefits. You'd have to build a 401(k) in the millions by the time you're 55 to match that kind of cheese. And that's before we even get into paying for their health care for life. These massive benefits are a huge and growing drain on city resources...

ETA & SDCTA TO HOLD JOINT FORUM ON PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PENSIONS

Event Will Be Held at Encinitas Library on April 28 at 6:00 PM

ENCINITAS—The Encinitas Taxpayers Association will host the San Diego County Taxpayers Association (SDCTA) as the SDCTA presents the findings of its watershed report on public employee pensions in San Diego County cities. Residents of Encinitas and other North County cities are encouraged to attend and learn more about the costs of their city’s employee pension obligations.

The presentation will include updated information concerning the state of city pensions gathered since the analysis was first released in the fall of 2009.

WHAT:
Presentation of SDCTA’s “San Diego Pension Plans Phase I: CalPERS-Contracted Municipalities,” the first part of a two-part study analyzing 17 city governments in San Diego County that participate in the California Public Employee Retirement System, including Encinitas.

WHEN:
Wednesday, April 28
6:00 PM to 7:00 PM

WHERE:
Encinitas Library
Community Room
540 Cornish Drive
Encinitas, CA
http://www.mapquest.com/mq/8-xDyz

WHO:
JoAnne Golden, Policy Manager for SDCTA. Ms. Golden has a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University with a specialization in economics and state and local policy. Prior to working at the SDCTA she worked for Schmitz & Associates, a Malibu-based land use consulting firm, and the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission.

The ETA reported on this issue back in August 2008.

Last summer, by a 4-1 (Barth) vote, the Encinitas City Council shot down the idea a sunshine ordinance that would improve the public's access to government documents and meetings.

From Calware:

"After a couple of weeks of negotiating with the city bureaucracy the Berkeley Sunshine Ordinance has cleared all of the hurdles for circulating an initiative," reports ordinance organizer Dean Metzger in the Berkeley Daily Planet. "Due to the lack of support from our city elected officials and city staff, the committee felt that the only way to get real sunshine (open government) in Berkeley was to circulate the ordinance as an initiative and place the ordinance on the November 2010 ballot."
Metzger continues:

The initiative is now being circulated to get the required signatures. The highlights of the ordinance are as follows.
Meetings

* Assures that meetings take place when and where people are most able to attend.
* Keeps decision making in the open for the City Council, Rent Board, Library Trustees and all City boards, commissions and committees.
* Opens up to the public committees and subcommittees that formerly were not subject to noticing and minute keeping requirements.
* Gives the public the right to know how their representatives voted in Closed Sessions even if motions were not approved and no action taken.
* Requires enough City Council meetings so that meetings adjourn around 11:00 p.m.
* Provides an orderly meeting structure so that you know in advance how much time you have for your comments.
* Ensures adequate time for decision makers to hear from the public and study relevant information before voting on an issue.
* Promotes civility at meetings when the public has full access to information and the opportunity to comment.
* Permits the public to place items on the agenda of the City Council with 100 signatures and on the agendas of boards and commissions with 50 signatures.
* Informs citizens about the activities of their representatives on regional agencies and in meetings with the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
* Requires full disclosure of private discussions regarding development issues and with lobbyists.

Access to Information

* Organizes records to provide easier access by the public for information.
* Guarantees timely access to public information, and minimizes delays and costs of obtaining copies of important documents.
* Prohibits arbitrary withholding and redaction of City documents requested by the public.
* Promotes greater use of electronic records in order to reduce City costs of providing information.
* Provides guidelines in an atmosphere of rapidly changing technology for the City to smoothly transition to electronic records, reducing paper and significantly decreasing costs while ensuring full access to public information.

Implementation

* Establishes an independent, appointed Sunshine Review Commission, with protections against influence by the City Council, City officials, and others.
* Authorizes the Commission to work proactively with staff and decision makers to improve public processes, noticing, and access to information.
* Requires timely rulings by the Commission on alleged sunshine violations, and provides penalties for violations in accord with existing Berkeley and state law.
* Provides a process for early identification of Sunshine violations and to correct them so expensive litigation is avoided.
* Identifies a funding source for the Commission to bring enforcement actions, and minimizes financial risk for individuals seeking to address violations.

For more info go to berkeleysunshine.org.

NCT A plea for pension reform
You know the pension tsunami is getting close to the shore when the mainstream media are filled with hard-hitting stories about the coming crisis, such as the front-page Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee article last Sunday documenting the way huge pension costs for retired public employees "threaten California cities (and) counties."

SacBee The Public Eye: Pension promises threaten California cities, counties
This year, the city of Roseville will spend about as much to fund its pension plan as it does on parks and recreation.

San Luis Obispo County will spend five times as much on pensions as it does prosecuting criminals.

And Stanislaus County's pension costs will be nearly double its $23.5 million general fund budget deficit...