OPINION: CalPERS’ Bad Faith Didn’t Stop in 1999

Sunday’s front-page story about how in 1999 the California Public Employees’ Retirement System orchestrated the approval of a 50 percent retroactive pension increase for state employees amounts to an autopsy of a public-policy crime. It is literally incredible that CalPERS told the Legislature that such a huge gift of money would have little or no long-term cost to state taxpayers because the dot-com boom then driving the stock market sky-high would never end. It is also stunning that a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis accepted this fairy tale in approving SB 400.