Cali insolvent: pension reform.

• Author: Shackford, Scott
• Position: Citings - Debt-ridden employee pension system of California - Brief article

It's difficult to pin down an exact dollar amount for how debt-ridden California's public employee pension system is, but calculations under new accounting rules from mid-2015 put that number at more than $600 billion.

Most attempts to reform the system have failed, thanks to California's constitution, which makes it virtually impossible to scale back benefits once they've been extended to public employees. Unions have aggressively fought any municipal efforts to move away from the existing pension system, even when voters pass local ballot initiatives that would do so.

Two reformers--Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego council member who has done work for Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes reason, and Chuck Reed, a former San Jose mayor--put together a bipartisan effort to craft a pair of ballot initiatives to change the state's...