It is difficult to resist the conclusion that unions exercise total capture of the Californian budgetmaking process. (100% payraises in the face of the financial collapse? For line officers? In only two years? After they're the best paid in the nation? Before you consider the pensions?!)
These guys are getting a lot of overtime in their last year so they can jack up their pensions. Some fools in Sacramento agreed to just consider the LAST year of work when calculating their pensions.
Obviously, Californians are being taken for a ride. By the union, by whoever is approving the overtime (probably another union member), by the legislative majority and whichever governor signed this very bad deal for taxpayers into law.
This happens everywhere. The Toronto Transit Commission does the best 4 years of your last 5 or something like that. I knew two people that worked there until they retired. The first was a "field clerk" (basically a secretary for a construction site) the other was a construction inspector.
They both paid the same percent into the pension yet despite salary differences of $35k vs $85k they both took home the same amount from the pension fund because the field clerk managed to get promoted to construction inspector for the last 4 years of her 35 year career there. I tried to show them how stupid this system is using Excel spreadsheets and how either the lifelong construction inspector is getting screwed or the taxpayer who backstops the pension is getting screwed but they wouldn't hear it. Whenever someone complains about their defined benefits public pension cutting their payments I just roll my eyes because it seems like these people don't want to care about how things work, they pretend that there is a magical piggy bank with endless money.
The worst part is that the construction inspector got bored at home so he eventually came back through an engineering firm as a "consultant" doing the same job he did before, but pulling both a salary and a pension now. Madness.
There is also more property being taxed than in the '70s. My father loves to drive around California and point out all the homes and businesses that weren't around when he lived here in the mid-'70s.
There is no amount of tax revenue that politicians can't spend (and if they can borrow, use as leverage for more borrowing).
There's a thesis expressed in this recent book (look for discussions of it) http://www.amazon.com/Never-Enough-Americas-Limitless-Welfar... that a or the fatal flaw (my term) of liberalism is that it has no limiting principle. I find it very hard to look at California and not agree.
No, popular wisdom in California is that we have the most inept legislature in the country and the unions are actually running the place. California doesn't appear to have any problem raising taxes.
