
Kamala Harris Distorts Pension Referendum
State Attorney General Kamala Harris, eager to please public employee unions, has cunningly limned the title and summary of an amendment to the state Constitution that would legislate pension reform.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris, eager to please public employee unions, has cunningly limned the title and summary of an amendment to the state Constitution that would legislate pension reform.

California’s powerful Teacher’s union is relentlessly assaulting efforts to support student rights, going hard after a judicial ruling against teacher employment laws and a Republican bill package that would have returned quality discernment to teacher layoffs and tackled troubled tenure issues.

The California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) has announced that its solvency has improved and that it is only $89.7 billion underfunded. Unfortunately, CalPERS’s purported solvency of percentage of 77% assumes the fantasy that it can conservatively compound its annual earnings at 7.5% without any losses. But if CalPERS only earns 4.5% a year–a rate conservative private pensions often shoot for–the fund’s long-term liability is a staggering $290 billion.