After a year of lip-service, Gov. Jerry Brown demonstrated last week that he isn’t serious about controlling the rapidly escalating costs of public-employee pensions.
The pathetic “reform plan” he unveiled Thursday is really a thread-bare series of tweaks — some that will make minor improvements, but none that will substantively shore up the financial instability of state and local retirement plans that are pushing hundreds of billions of debt onto our children and grandchildren, and siphoning ever-increasing sums from vital public services.
Brown talked about pension reform during the gubernatorial campaign last year, but his superficial understanding at the time raised concerns about whether he would be willing to stand up to the public-employee unions that supported him and make meaningful change.
Once in office, he said pension reform would have to wait until budget negotiations were completed, but Republican legislators rightly insisted the issue be included in the bargaining. Now that talks have broken down and Brown has gone public with his proposals, it’s clear he doesn’t have a substantive solution.
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