Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

WALL STREET JOURNAL/OPINION, 8/27/2010 by Arnold Schwarzenegger - Few Californians in the private sector have $1 million in savings, but that's effectively the retirement account they guarantee to many government employees. [Snip] As former Speaker of the State Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown pointed out earlier this year in the San Francisco Chronicle, roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Those costs have been rising fast. Spending on California's state employees over the past decade rose at nearly three times the rate our revenues grew, crowding out programs of great importance to our citizens.Read more at WSJ...

There are two dramatic graphs in Gov. Schwarzenegger's op-ed that are scary but instructive. --bc