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Governments, which often offer their workers DB pensions, have been far slower than the corporate sector in attempting to reduce the cost. In large part this is because of the way they account for pensions. In America they are allowed to assume a return of 7.5-8% on their investments, making deficits look a lot smaller. But generous accounting assumptions do not make the problem go away. The Centre for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College has looked at around 4,000 American state and local-government pension plans. Even using the accounting standards permitted, the plans were on average 72% funded at the end of 2015. On a more conservative 4% discount rate, this drops to 45%. On the former basis, the collective deficit is $1.2 trillion; on the latter $4.1 trillion.

Altogether, the raises are expected to cost about $99.4 million a year, according to the state Finance Department.

An unspoken factor, however, is that many of the proposed taxes that purport to improve public safety are actually needed to satisfy rapidly increasing demands of pension funds, particularly the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, for more “contributions” to cover pension costs not being met by moribund trust fund earnings.

The retiring forecaster for California’s largest public employee pension fund offered some final advice on Tuesday: State and local governments should be required to pay more into the system as soon as next year.

Lawmakers agreed last month to extend a vital subsidy for the Silicon Valley company, one that makes its pricey power generators more attractive to buyers such as hospitals, data centers and mega-retailers. . . “It would be a great disadvantage for the customers to no longer have this incentive,” said V. John White, a lobbyist for Fuel Cell Energy, a company that produces fuel cell generators. “It would undermine the ability to make these units economically feasible.”

The court ruled that the state must reimburse Los Angeles and 83 other Southern California cities for certain costs of complying with a stormwater permit issued by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. . . The Supreme Court held that the contested stormwater permit conditions were state policy choices of how to implement the Clean Water Act, but were not themselves federal mandates. Therefore, the state must pay for the costs of their implementation.

“I think voters are starting to say, `Wait a minute. We keep raising taxes – where’s it going?’” Nation said. “Well, to a great extent, it’s going to public employee compensation and to pensions, specifically. And I think at some point, voters are going to say, `Not anymore.’”

It was a deal that wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers an extra dime. Now the state’s annual tab is in the billions, and the cost keeps climbing.

It turns out that Calpers, which managed the little pension plan, keeps two sets of books: the officially stated numbers, and another set that reflects the “market value” of the pensions that people have earned. The second number is not publicly disclosed. And it typically paints a much more troubling picture, according to people who follow the money.

Volkswagen AG confessed last fall to installing “defeat devices” in diesel cars that overrode nitrogen-oxide controls. For these sins of emission, VW has agreed to compensate consumers and perform green acts of contrition including promoting electric cars, which may be another way for the government to supercharge Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Facing strong resistance from teachers unions, she amended the measure again before its first hearing in the Senate Education Committee – and actually lost support. Unions objected to a change that would have simply extended the tenure evaluation period for all teachers to three years. With the expedited dismissal process now voluntary and the layoff provision removed entirely, education groups that previously supported the proposal rejected it as a “mere shell of its former self.”

The state’s new budget, which is awaiting Brown’s signature after the Legislature’s approval Wednesday, includes nothing for the vehicle subsidies or other efforts to make heavy-duty trucks more environmentally friendly. Meantime, the clean-car programs are pushing people to waiting lists.

The Los Angeles area business community said they were ready to battle for the half-cent sales tax dedicated for transportation. They better roll up their sleeves and get ready for a tough fight. The reason? The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted 11 -2 to put the tax on the November ballot with no end date, “no sunset” in the parlance of the board.

Yee’s council explored two often-discussed changes in the tax system: a split-roll property tax in which business property would be taxed on a different basis than residential property, and taxation of services, which makes up a greater and greater share of the state’s economy. . . The council was instructed not to deal with the spending side of the budget. That is a glaring omission. If one is trying to determine how much revenue is needed to run the state, spending reforms must be considered.

But California is radically boosting pension spending instead. Legislation bailing out California’s teacher pension fund requires a doubling of spending on pensions to more than $10 billion per year, leaving that much less for preparing, hiring, paying and upgrading active teachers. $10 billion is nearly three times more than the state spends on California State University or the University of California. Needless to say, California cannot deploy a sufficient number of great teachers for six million students when so much of its education budget is being diverted to pensions.