The other shoe is dropping

Our defined benefits catastrophe is beginning to bite:

The cost of shoring up Calpers, the troubled $200 billion pension fund for California public employees, will ultimately fall on the state's 38 million residents, who are already dealing with tax increases and reduced public services.

The state and local governments are contractually bound to increase their payments to Calpers to help it make up for its investment losses of more than $50 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30.   ...

In the Orange County city of Fullerton, officials said they were notified by Calpers in August that their city would have to pay a total of $5.5 million more in the four-year period beginning in 2011 to fully fund city employees' retirements. The city, which passed a balanced budget in June that included a hiring freeze, has already dipped another $4 million into the red and now plans to cut employee pay by an as-yet-undetermined amount.