Local Stories by Local People
updated: Nov 08, 2012, 3:50 PM

The county's employee retirement system is 72-percent funded, according to a report given by chief Gary Amelio to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 340744	2012-11-08 05:22 PM
The article said "In fiscal year 2011, the value of the plan assets was $2 billion and the unfunded accrued liability was $2.7 billion, leaving $741.9 million in unfunded liability". $741 Million which will have to come from us. boy the news keeps getting better and better. When will the folks in charge of goverment, those to are supposed to be fiduciaries to the public's money, do the right thing and make sure they do NOT spend more than they give out. Jees...
COMMENT 340770	2012-11-08 06:57 PM
Hey Calpers- How long are you going to bet that the rates of return on your stock investments will be higher than they actually end up being? There is only so much that the taxpayers can give to makeup for your poor investments. And why the heck are we even responsible for funding someone else's retirement anyways?? It's time that the public workers take risks like us in the private sector have to. Now we are the highest taxed state in the Union and have 1/3 of the nation's welfare cases. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” -Tocqueville
COMMENT 340856	2012-11-09 06:56 AM
Tocqueville never spoke or wrote those words in his life, 340770.
COMMENT 340902	2012-11-09 08:26 AM
744 my guess to your "when" question is when the state completely implodes from the weight of all the parasites sucking the life out of it.This taxation will only end when the only people left to tax are themselves.Get ready for a whole new way of life, it's on the way.
COMMENT 340913	2012-11-09 08:47 AM
I know this is like throwing holy water on a vampire, but California is not one of the states that has the highest tax burden per capita, From the 2009 data, we are only 8th in per capita tax collections for local and state taxes. That burden of 11.8% of income compared to an average of 9.8% for all the other states. (Ca Tax Foundation Data). Non-public safety pensions which are the majority of the retirees only account for about 50% of the pension costs. The remaining costs are for the relatively small number of firefighter and cop pensions who can retire young and get much larger pensions than clerical workers and engineers. But no one is arguing that the cops and firefighters don't deserve these nice pensions, are they? But don't a let any facts get in the way of some good public pension bashing! Have at it.
RHS	2012-11-09 10:19 AM
correction: 856 was right.
COMMENT 341063	2012-11-09 01:42 PM
913 well said. Why is there not the same anger towards the corporate wellfare. It is of a magnitude of 10 to 1 and we don't here about it in mainstream media. Oh yeah it's because they run the media too.
COMMENT 341194P	2012-11-10 02:16 AM
Hey 770 - Santa Barbara County employees are not in the CalPERS retirement system...

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