Public sector reels at retiree healthcare tab

The L.A. Times reports:

For years, public employers have promised workers lifetime benefits, but little money has been put aside to cover the bill. Now, new accounting rules have required government employers to calculate and disclose the potential liability.

The tab is enormous.

Some examples:

• Over the next three decades, the Los Angeles Unified School District will have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars a year for retiree health benefits. It has yet to set funds aside to cover the bill. "These costs are just crushing," said district general counsel Kevin Reed.

• The state government is on the hook for payouts averaging well over a billion dollars a year — and possibly billions more — for retiree healthcare over the next three decades.

• Contra Costa County's retiree healthcare tab is on track to grow larger than the value of all its assets by 2012, according to a government report, which would make the county at that point "technically insolvent."

• In just four years ending in fiscal 2004-05, the cost of providing healthcare to the average Los Angeles County retiree doubled. By 2011, government retiree healthcare costs statewide are projected to be nearly triple those in 2004.

Moody's and Standard and Poor's are way behind on this subject.Maybe it's time for Contra Costa County to start selling land.