Posted on 03/22/2016 6:11:09 PM PDT by massmike
Although its 2014-15 budget was balanced, California’s state government ended the fiscal year $175.1 billion in the red, thanks largely to state retirement obligations that had to be included in its balance sheet for the first time.
Under new rules by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, state and local governments must list unfunded pension liabilities as debts alongside the more traditional bonds and other forms of debt.
Counties and other local governments have been rolling out their annual financial reports this year, some showing multibillion-dollar deficits for pension obligations, so the state’s report was not unexpected.
Pension reform advocates have praised the new GASB standards, saying they drive home their point that pension obligations are debts that distort state and local finances.
The newly revised state data are contained in the “comprehensive annual financial report” that Controller Betty Yee issued on Friday. And she noted in a cover letter that the debts for “postemployment benefits” will jump again in the report for the 2017-18 fiscal year, when state retiree health care must be included under GASB’s rules.
Aside from the employee benefit debts, Yee’s report on the 2014-15 fiscal year is quite positive. It notes that operating revenues, principally income and sales taxes, exceeded spending by several billion dollars, providing a cushion for the 2015-16 fiscal year that followed.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
CALPERS is my “crack”.
sounds like we have the same dealer
“All I want is ma’ share!”
“It would be nice if there were some means of bankruptcy or reorganization for the state.”
There is. It’s called the 1867-68 Reconstruction Act.
Part I - Congress declares the state in insurrection, sends in a military governor (typically a combat-tested general) and troops and removes the governor and state legislature.
Part II - The military governor tells the people to elect a new governor and state legislature to fix their screwed up state.
Part III - In the meantime, the state loses its entire congressional delegation until the voters elect a state government that follows the US Constitution and protects all the rights of it citizens.
Part IV - All the seditionists are either arrested or given one week to leave the United States forever.
It’s all outlined in Thaddeuas Stevens’ Reconstruction Act and its various 19th century updates.
That is the long-term problem; the short-term problem is that current residents/businesses get taxed up the wazoo with no return on it - the current revenues have to pay workers who retired decades ago, and nothing is left to hire current workers or fix stuff.
NJ is living through this now (for the same reason), and people & employers are fleeing. Who would move here, just to inherit a huge IOU?
“NJ is living through this now (for the same reason), and people & employers are fleeing. Who would move here, just to inherit a huge IOU?”
That’s why I think states rights are paramount.
A state should have the opportunity to do what it thinks is best for it, not the federal govt.
If a state chooses to undermine its citizens, those citizens will then flee for other states or usurp those in authority and make things right.
If the federal govt is in charge, then there is no escape.
Both NJ and CA are great states, but there must be a reckoning at some point for the past liberal policies.
Smells like it anyway.
The problem is that to keep populations in those states (and keep the government caste - teachers, cops, politicians) working, federal programs (Section 8, food stamps/SNAP, SS disability, etc.) are used to take wealth from other states’ taxpayers and funnel them into the dying socialist utopias...
and that problem is solved by retaining the control of the purse at state levels, not federal.
In no manner shape or form should a state be required to subsidize another state that makes bad choices.
Let that state with bad choices die a slow death.
I couldn’t agree more; the Dems are erasing distinctions between states because their tax & spend suffers when employers and industrious people flee Red (communist) states for more business/taxpayer-friendly ones. They are left with the bottom of society/dregs that will never produce anything while demanding everything.
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