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This Book Describes How California’s Pension Crisis Was Created and What Can Be Done to Fix It

California’s $500 billion pension and retiree healthcare crisis which will cost taxpayers about $70,000 per household did not require secret meetings, criminal conspiracies, or corrupt masterminds. It required something far more sinister—and far more dangerous: greed, conflicts of interest, professional silence, and a court system that wrote the rules and then denied the people justice.

Here's what happened. In the early 2000s, public pension benefits across California were increased retroactively, often by 40 to 50 percent. Under California law, the increases required disclosure to the public of their long-term future annual cost before adoption. That disclosure did not occur anywhere. Instead, elected officials were told a remarkable lie by CalPERS the state's giant pension system: the increases would cost nothing.

As a result, the true cost was not only hidden from the public, but also from elected officials who may not have approved the increases if they were properly calculated and disclosed. It was hidden because too many people in positions of authority benefited substantially.

County administrators, city managers, pension managers, union leaders, city attorneys, and county counsels operate within the same professional ecosystem. They attend the same conferences, rely on the same actuaries, and they concocted a scheme to enrich themselves. By the time pension increases reached the state legislature, city councils and boards of supervisors for approval, they arrived pre-packaged with actuarial assurances that their approval carried no cost or risk.

Everyone involved had something to gain:

• Public employee unions secured richer retirement benefits for their members.
• Senior administrators and elected officials boosted their own pensions.
• CalPERS increased its power and administration fees.
• Elected officials avoided conflict with the powerful public employee unions who supported their campaigns.
• And government attorneys never warned anyone that the law required public disclosure of the increase and its cost. They sat through the meetings approving the increase without saying a word about the legal requirements.

This book presents in graphic form the impact of the increases 25 years after their enactment when the true costs can be easily seen and the lies revealed. It also explains why so many people with responsibility for public finances accepted a claim that defied basic arithmetic, and why none of them spoke up.

When the fiscal consequences finally became visible and citizens challenged the increases in court, the cases were not resolved on the merits. Courts did not rule that the increases were lawful. They ruled that it was too late to challenge them. The statute of limitations, the refuge of scoundrels—became a shield for decisions whose costs had been concealed for years. Those rulings also ignored the law stating mandatory requirements that did not follow the law were void from their inception.

California’s Pension Time Bomb and How to Defuse It draws on public records, actuarial reports, financial statements, and court decisions to explain how this happened, how much it has cost taxpayers, and what can still be done by presenting a practical roadmap for restoring transparency, accountability, and fiscal sustainability.

California’s Pension Time Bomb is a data-driven examination of how retroactive pension increases and legal barriers and court rulings created a half a trillion dollar crisis for taxpayers while providing solutions to fix a broken system.

Procurando California's Pension Time Bomb & How to Defuse It? Aqui você encontra tudo sobre este livro de Ken Churchill em 30 de janeiro de 2026. Nesta página estão a descrição da obra, os detalhes da edição (236 páginas) e os formatos disponíveis para baixar: epub, pdf, lit, odf. O livro está escrito em Inglês. Se você gosta de Livros Internacionais, Direito, Procedimentos e Contencioso, Litígio, explore também outros títulos da mesma categoria no Leitura em português. Veja ainda as outras obras de Ken Churchill em nosso catálogo.