City Name Median Earnings for City Residents Medians Earnings for City Staff City Earnings as % of Residents Earnings Bell Gardens $ 23,425 $ 84,543 361% El Monte $ 27,115 $ 86,973 […]
Analysis of Employee Compensation at the Marin Municipal Water District

The Marin Municipal Water District recently proposed a rate hike that would increase most residents’ water bills by an average 27 percent. The proposal comes on the heels of a recently released “cost of service analysis” […]
CalPERS 2014 Pension Payouts Higher than Previously Reported
2014 was the first year in which CalPERS provided an annual pension amount, as compared to the base monthly amount they provided in previous years. Multiple CalPERS members reported to Transparent California that […]
Full-career retirees comprise 19% of CalPERS membership, receive 38% of benefits

On our website, viewers can see the average full-career pension by employer for CalPERS or any other public pension plan in California. We define a full-career as those with at least 30 […]
Average 2014 pensions for California’s 20 independent county retirement systems
Transparent California now has 2014 pension data for virtually every major California government agency. In addition to the 2014 data for CalPERS and CalSTRS, data is now available for many of the […]
Governing Magazine: Why We Need to Take the ‘Fire’ Out of ‘Fire Department’
Oregon’s former Secretary of State, Phil Keisling, weighs in on the reality that most fire departments are primarily responding to EMT calls, and offers some interesting solutions: This isn’t just a big-city […]
Unfunded liabilities as quicksand: Why it is so difficult to return to funded status
PensionTsunami.com brings us these remarkably insightful remarks from David Crane that explain why – when already carrying an unfunded liability – a pension system needs to outperform, not merely hit, their investment target in order […]
Nobel Laureate: Public Pensions are a “Disaster” and Rely on “Idiotic” Accounting
Nobel laureate William F. Sharpe spoke to the Financial Analysts Journal on how public pension plans use inappropriately high discount rates to understate their true liability: Are public pensions a problem? You bet. […]
CalPERS looks at long-term rate hike to cut risk

Originally posted on Calpensions:
CalPERS is considering small increases in employer and employee rates over decades to reduce the risk of big investment losses, a policy that also would lower an earnings…
Why Public Pension Forecasters Consistently Get it Wrong
The Reason Foundation has a fantastic article on the systemic, behavioral bias at play in making public pension actuarial assumptions. The article cites a recent study that reveals, contrary to popular opinion, […]