Excerpt: California's $20 billion financial crisis -- just the latest in a series, like a Hollywood horror movie with endless sequels -- makes it Exhibit A of the pension funding predicaments looming over many state and local governments in the U.S.... In the Golden State, meanwhile, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, had sharply increased benefits for state retirees in 1999. 'CalPERS's investment returns provide this historic opportunity,' then-board president William Crist declared, 'without causing any additional taxpayer burden.' Since then the state's public employee pension outlays have ballooned by 2,000 percent, while state revenues have increased only 24 percent.

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