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Jon Fleischman

Faux Pension Reform From Steinberg

I just read over on the Sacramento Bee website that apparently State Senate President Darrell Steinberg is talking about moving forward with some sort of “pension reform” proposal from the Democrats. Given that Capitol Democrats are a wholly owned subsidiary of the state’s public employee unions, it’s no wonder that the provisions thrown out by Steinberg address some egregious problems with the current system (spiking, etc) — but there is no “meat on the bones” in terms of the legislature substantially reducing the amount of money that goes to new employees, and he is rather unequivocal that he will support no proposal to reduce future year benefits of current state employees.

It is so clear that the agenda of Steinberg and his liberal colleagues is to try to pass “window dressing” faux reforms to try and convince California voters that the pension issue has been dealt with — when in reality the unfordable defined benefit pensions will continue unabated.

If you really want to reform the retirement system for California ands its political subdivisions, you need to do two things. The first is work backward, and base the effectiveness of pension reforms based on how much real reduction there is in liability — which is about shifting responsibly to the employee and away from the employer (us). The second is to implement a 401k style defined contribution system going forward that, simply put, would allow each employee to manage their own retirement account. They can then work more years, or less, depending on when they feel the money in their individual account is sufficient to support their desired post-retirement lifestyle.