San Diego is further down the road to a pension crisis than is Orange County. But our time is likely to come, sooner or later, and so we hope Mayor Sanders' idea gets a good hearing here.
Orange County Treasurer John Moorlach, a leading critic of recent pension increases and a candidate for the Board of Supervisors, thinks the Sanders proposal would be good for the county, even though "the cat's already out of the bag" in both Orange County and San Diego because the contracts signed with the employee unions are almost impossible to change. Nonetheless, Mr. Moorlach said, allowing voters to pass on future pension increases would help prevent irresponsible pension spikes.
In 2004, pensions for county employees (other than police and firefighters) were increased a stunning 62 percent by a three-member majority of the O.C. Board of Supervisors: Bill Campbell, Tom Wilson and Jim Silva.
Last year, the Orange County grand jury issued a report that concluded that an actuarial firm had calculated that the Orange County Employee Retirement System's unfunded liability was "$2.3 billion as opposed to the previous projection of $1.3 billion."
Unfunded means the income from county investments won't pay for the promised benefits, which means taxpayers would be on the hook for the extra billions of dollars.
Once again, relying on someone else to fund your retirement in accounts you don't own is a recipe for disaster. Increasing pension benefits is an easy bargaining chip for an employer to negotiate with a union, but those benefits are really nothing more than a promise.
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