The decision will make it harder for government employees to abuse and milk the state’s retirement systems.
by Scott Shackford
Reason.com
California’s ticking pension time bombs have not been defused, but a state Supreme Court decision has turned back the clock a bit.
California’s Supreme Court has upheld part of a 2013 law that prohibited county public employees from “pension spiking,” a trick by which government workers find ways to artificially jack up their total pay as they approach retirement. This inflates the size of the pensions they’ll be paid annually for the rest of their lives.
In a unanimous ruling, the state’s top court determined that pension spiking is not protected by the state’s constitution or by what’s known as the “California Rule,” a decades-old legal precedent that has largely prevented governments within the state from scaling back any sort of benefits once they’ve been offered to employees.