AN L.A. TIMES EDITORIAL ON the public-pension crisis:

Many state and local government employees have been promised pensions that the public couldn’t have afforded even had there been no crash. . . . The commission is right about the importance of reducing the liabilities posed by current employees. And though picking a fight with unions over unilateral reductions in pensions probably isn’t the solution, the report should persuade both sides to do more at the negotiating table to prevent pension costs from swamping state and local budgets. As the commission notes, public employees in California enjoy some of the most generous pension plans in the country. Those plans won’t do them much good, however, if their employer can’t afford to keep them on the payroll.

Read the whole thing.