Riverside County pension obligations underfunded by $1 billion

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors has received some hopeful news from County Chief Financial Officer Ed Corser. He says the county’s 1 billion dollars in unfunded pension obligations will be reduced over time, thanks in part to improvements introduced last year in the county’s retirement system.

But Corser warned the supervisors that even though Riverside County is well-funded, pension costs will increase, giving rise to further challenges in the future.

Why will pension costs increase? It’s because the California Public Employees’ Retirement System needs to collect more money from local governments for the system to stay sound.

CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund. It’s valued at 260 billion dollars. But it lost close to 100 billion dollars during the economic downturn between 2008 and 2010. And it has 87 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities.