This column has covered many scandals in recent weeks including the eye-popping fraud with EDD , the rampant abuse in Medi-Cal, and the nation’s highest level of unemployment insurance debt. All of this, of course, is capped off with our budget crisis when we went from a $100 billion surplus to a $20 billion deficit in a few short months. And if preliminary projections are anywhere close to being accurate, the state will face another huge deficit this coming year.
Taxpayers hear a lot about how generous California’s pension benefits are, notwithstanding some minor reforms under former Governor Jerry Brown, but the public’s understanding of public sector pension benefits remains elusive because the subject is so complex.
It should surprise no one that California has the most pension debt – by far – compared to all other states, at nearly $250 billion. No other state even comes close. The best explanation of defined benefit pension systems comes from our friends at the Reason Foundation. Reason’s Pension Integrity Project looks at 118 state pension systems and provides a good comparison of where California stands relative to other states. Among all states’ systems, the 118 state pension systems have $1.3 trillion in total unfunded liabilities at the end of the 2023 fiscal year.