The State Worker

We've said it before: Watch what's happening with local public pensions, state workers.

There's a link between what's happening at the city and county level and the state. This story by Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl hints at it.

CalPERS came up during a forum on Wednesday that featured Claremont city council candidates Corey Calaycay, Bridget Healy and Larry Schroeder. Like many local governments, the Southern California city of Claremont will probably have to pay more to the fund eventually to make up for the losses that CalPERS has suffered in the last year.

From Krickl's story:

The final question of the evening sparked some heated comments. Pulling a question from the audience, moderator Barbara Musselman asked the candidates about the CalPERS shortfall for city employees and how the problem should be addressed.

With careers in government behind them, all three candidates have personal stakes in the CalPERS system.

Ms. Healy did not think Claremont should make any changes to the system at a local level.

"If we are to address the PERS issue, I believe it needs to be done on a statewide basis," Ms. Healy said. "I don't think this is something that Claremont can solve on its own. What concerns me is that if there is no statewide solution, I worry about the impact on recruitment and retention of employees. I worry that employees would leave one city to go to another, for example if Claremont reduced its PERS options ..."

Mr. Schroeder said the city should hire an independent actuarial "with experience on this in other cities so we could get fresh perspectives and see what options are available to us."

"The reality of the situation is the PERS Board is a real political animal," he said. "And although I think it would be great if we could get legislation through and have somebody sponsor that, it would be a real uphill battle."

Mr. Calaycay said Claremont could lower the benefit percentages through a 2-tiered system from 2.5 percent at 55 to 2 percent at 55, since the city already offers some benefits more generous than other cities.

"Some of [the problems] need to be worked out through the PERS program and some of it we created ourselves," he said.

Healy's comment that public pension changes need to be done "on a statewide basis" echoes what we've been saying since we started this blog: Pension pressure from local governments could eventually build sentiment for a statewide campaign to change benefits for future hires or subject benefit increases to some sort of public review or vote.