LAO's Position is that State Pension Contributions to UC are Voluntary & Should Come With Conditions

The Legislative Analyst's Office has released a video of about 15 minutes on public pensions. Most of the discussion deals with CalPERS, CalSTRS, and other systems. There are occasional references to UC at various points in the video.

However, at the end it is stated that the state at some point should voluntarily contribute to UC but make that contribution conditional on the UC pension being more or less the same as other state systems. Put another way, the LAO's position is that the state has no legal obligation to contribute at any point. Moreover, the video describes a future two-tier for other state systems which does not appear to be the same as what the Regents adopted in December. Presumably, the voluntary contribution would be conditional on changing that decision. The position of the LAO with regard to UC starts at 13:59 on the video.

Keep in mind that we are in no immediate "danger" of the state making any pension contribution to UC.



UPDATE: A write-up about this video report from calpensions can be found at http://calpensions.com/2011/02/11/lao-recommends-sweeping-state-pension-reform/

UPDATE: PowerPoint slides related to the LAO video are now at http://www.lao.ca.gov/presentations/2011/pub_retirement_bens/pub_retirement_bens_021011.pdf The UC recommendations are on slide #31.