Rising public pension costs are one of the catalysts pushing cities into fiscal peril. In San Bernardino, the city’s obligation to its employee retirement system rose from $1 million in the 2006-07 fiscal year to nearly double that in the current budget year. In three years, those costs are expected to swallow 15% of the budget.
Pension spending grew an average of 11.4% a year in the state’s biggest cities and counties from 1999 to 2010, roughly twice as fast as spending on public safety, social services, recreation, health and sanitation, according to a February report by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Joe Nation, a Stanford economics professor and co-author of the February report, thinks for at least some cities, insolvency is inevitable unless they can wrest much bigger concessions on salaries and pensions from public employees.
“I think this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the problem,” Nation said. “Stockton was spending $12 [million] or $13 million on pensions 10 years ago. By 2010, it was $30 million … and will double again over the next five years, unless something is changed.”
