Sorry, that's legalese for "yes."

I pretty much agree with your points outlined above. I differ only in that I don't think the Legislature is the least bit interested in solving any of these problems. I think instead they'd prefer for them to fester and then blame the consequences on "tax and spend" Democrats. I don't think it would have been difficult to address some of these state pension/retirement issues over the last several years while so much was on the chopping block, but the only body that can address them is the Legislature. They make us pay what they make us pay, and they keep increasing those retirement costs while repeatedly giving us insufficient funds to pay for everything else. Just last year, the state increase in funding covered only 2/3 of the state-mandated retirement cost increase. So even with an increase in funding, the increase in state-madated costs started our year out with a deficit.

Somebody's got to break the logjam. If something like Prop 5 doesn't break it and make the Legislature act, then I don't know how to make that happen, and I'm not confident that anything will.