Most pension experts believe that without additional reform, pension payments are destined to put an unsustainable burden on California’s state and local governments. Even if pension fund investments meet their performance objectives over the next several years, California’s major pension funds have already announced that payments required from participating agencies are going to roughly double in the next six years. This is a best-case scenario, and it is already more than many cities and counties are going to be able to afford.
California’s first major statewide attempt to reform pensions was the PEPRA (Public Employee Pension Reform Act) legislation, which took effect on January 1st, 2013. This legislation reduced pension benefit formulas and increased required employee contributions, but for the most part only affected employees hired after January 1st, 2013. The reason PEPRA didn’t significantly affect current employees was due to the so-called “California Rule,” a legal argument that interprets state and federal constitutional law to, in effect, prohibit changes to pension benefits for employees already working.
The legal precedent for what is now called the California Rule was set in 1955, when the California Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to a 1951 city charter amendment in Allen v. City of of Long Beach. The operative language in that ruling was the following: “changes in a pension plan which result in disadvantage to employees should be accompanied by comparable new advantages.”
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