With the cost of public pensions still a hot political issue, a study commissioned by CalPERS shows that government retirement checks represent a potent economic benefit to the Sacramento area.
The study, to be released today, says retirees in the six-county Sacramento area received pension checks totalling $2.08 billion last year.
That's equivalent to roughly 2 percent of the region's gross domestic product – a measure of total economic output.
Just in Sacramento County, about 43,119 retirees received checks averaging $30,647 apiece.
State government is greater Sacramento's single largest employer. Only Southern California ($3.6 billion) and the Bay Area ($2.5 billion) received more in CalPERS pension checks last year, according to the study by Robert Fountain of Regional Economic Consultants in Benicia.
Including the so-called "multiplier effect," which estimates how frequently the money is spent and spent again, Fountain's study says the CalPERS checks generate almost $4 billion in economic activity in the Sacramento area.
Fountain, a professor emeritus at Sacramento State, has conducted similar studies the past few years for the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the state's other big public pension fund, the California State Teachers' Retirement System.
This latest installment comes at a politically sensitive time. Although many public employees' unions have accepted pension concessions, Republicans inside and outside the Legislature continue to push various plans to overhaul the retirement systems in order to reduce the cost to taxpayers.
These efforts followed the market crash of 2008, which weakened CalPERS and CalSTRS and put taxpayers on the hook for higher contributions.
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