FACING FACTS ABOUT PUBLIC PENSIONS

These are excerpts from the Inside Opinion blog by Press Democrat editorial writers Paul Gullixson and Jim Sweeney. The blog can be found on WatchSonomaCounty.com.

Changes are afoot in how cities and counties are required to account for pension obligations, and it's not good news for Sonoma County. Reform advocates say it could blow a $150 million hole in the county's annual budget.

The Government Accounting Standards Board, the agency that sets the generally accepted accounting standards for public agencies, recognizes that there's a problem with how cities and counties account for retirement costs. Right now, those obligations appear primarily as a footnote in audited statements as a future expense, which is why in many areas the unfunded liability problems have been easy to ignore. But that's about to change.

Beginning in the summer of 2012 or possibly 2013, cities and counties will be required to account for their annual commitments directly on the balance sheet as a "net pension liability."

Let's just say that's a big number. For the county, there's about a $400 million gap between the value of its assets (not including the recent stock market drops) and what it will need to cover in pension obligations over the next 20 years. For Santa Rosa, the gap is roughly $100 million.

"The people are suddenly going to start seeing that these budgets are not balanced," said John Dickerson, a Mendocino County financial analyst who tracks the debt problems in his county via his website yourpublicmoney.com.

Dickerson and Tom Lynch, the chairman of the Sonoma County Planning Commission, and an advocate for pension reform in Sonoma County, say the obligation to report on annual pension expenses will create a $40 million hole in Mendocino County's budget and a $150 million annual gap for Sonoma County.

"Financial statements are supposed to tell the truth," Dickerson said. "They haven't."

As for the debate about pensions, "It's going to be another barrel of gas dumped on the fire," he said. Hopefully, it will light a fire under local reform efforts as well.

-- Paul Gullixson

In the 1988 election, George Bush set out to become the first sitting vice president since Martin Van Buren (1836) to win a presidential election. He succeeded -- with a little help from a weak Democratic field. By all appearances, Barack Obama will be trying to win re-election with a higher unemployment rate than any incumbent since FDR.

Until recently, conventional wisdom said he'd probably succeed, aided, like Bush, by a weak field of opponents. But conventional wisdom has a way of changing. Republicans already have had plenty to say on the subject, but Obama's hearing it from his own party, too. He turned 50 Aug. 4, and the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party marked the occasion with a resolution ... calling for someone to challenge him in the primary.

The Progressive Caucus website features a link to North Bay congressional candidate Norman Solomon. He was an Obama delegate at the Democratic convention in 2008, but he's keeping his options open for 2012. "The bottom line is, I plan to support whomever the Democratic Party nominates for president in 2012," he told me in an email. As for a reprise of his role as Obama delegate, he said he'd be too busy campaigning to attend the convention.

It's way too early to place any bets on Obama's re-election, but instead of hope and change, his campaign theme is almost certainly going to be the lesser of two evils.

-- Jim Sweeney