California has come a long way to dig itself out of budget deficits, but the state remains on shaky ground due to nearly $400 billion in unfunded liabilities and debt from public pensions, retiree health care and bonds, financial analysts say.
And that only counts state-level liabilities. Our county has clawed its way back into the black, but still struggles. For many years, county workers with 25 years of service were entitled to full pension at 57 years old, which means they have a lot of young retirees. Meanwhile, any supervisor who serves six years (three terms) gets a pension for life. I almost thought about running for supervisor after I found out about that.
My saving grace is that my meager pension from a time as a state employee is from the state of Wisconsin, the only government pension I know of (definitely at the state or federal level) designed to stay solvent from the get go.
