More on "Harbingers" of U.S. Doom

In the Lewis Vanity Fair article I reported on last week, a key topic was spending on public employee pensions. In the area of pension reforms, California seems to be lagging the rest of the U.S. Vauhini Vara writes in the Wall Street Journal (10/28/11, "California Moves to Ratchet Down Worker Pensions"):

"So far in 2011, 27 state legislatures have enacted significant retirement-system changes, following 21 states in 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures."

If true, it seems that 48 states have already enacted retirement system changes, while California is still at a proposal stage and has yet to pass legislation. In its present form Jerry Brown's ideas are unlikely to garner enough support to pass the California legislature. This result, which seems to match the rest of Brown's experience since being elected, is very similar to the events of Schwarzenegger's administration.

Curious, I searched out the NCSL web site. Within a few minutes, I was able to find these two reports:

2011 Pension and Retirement Enacted Legislation

2010 Pension and Retirement Enacted Legislation

The first NCSL report, dated 9/29/11 contains within its Findings section the statement that was cited by Vara:

"Even more state legislatures enacted significant retirement system changes in 2011 than did so in 2010: 27 in 2011, compared with 21 in 2010. Since some states revisited the topic, in all, 40 states enacted significant revisions to at least one state retirement plan in 2010 or 2011. At the end of August, pending legislation on pension reform remained before the Massachusetts and Ohio legislatures, and the governors of California and New York had proposed changes that are likely to be considered later in 2011 or in 2012."

So the picture that emerges is that California is behind the rest of the country in reforming its public employee retirement system. Clearly, you cannot treat actions there as a leading indicator. Regardless of the outcome, whether good for taxpayers or public employees, the key point is that other states have already been there and done that.