California’s pension debt cannot be ignored

A decade ago, at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request, I supervised a graduate student team that performed a comprehensive analysis of public pensions in California.
The goal was to calculate California’s pension debt, the difference between assets and liabilities.
The team’s conclusions: the unfunded liability was over $500 billion—seven times the number officially reported. That was in 2008.
The student team recommended several actions to lawmakers and pension