California public employee pensions were negotiated by unions (who had representatives who STRONGLY and PASSIONATELY cared for their members) and politicians (who strongly and passionately cared that the union members vote for them, but did not care much about the taxpayer).
What was the result?
The union members got unfairly huge payouts at the expense of regular citizens and taxpayers, most of whom have never received remotely as good of benefits and the government workers did.
This was not just a one time thing… this has continued for a hundred years in California, with the unions getting bigger and bigger chunks of our GDP.
The only way to correct this balance is to undo the unfair deals that were done in years past.
In the future, public employee unions should be disallowed. You can’t have a fair negotiation when there is no one who will represent one side.