Our state government shouldn’t be using gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors to hide the true nature of our fiscal condition from California’s taxpayers. One example is the way that our state pension funds report on their own fiscal health. As Controller, I will fight to ensure that our state’s public pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, clearly tell taxpayers how much they will owe once retirement benefits for current and former government employees come due. Today, for example, CalPERS estimates that it is about 70 percent funded but bases this on an assumption that it will be able to achieve a 7 percent yearly rate of return. But that’s a benchmark it has met only half of the time over the last ten years and one that CalPERS has significantly underperformed over the last twenty. A realistic accounting of expected returns would increase CalPERS’s unfunded liabilities by tens of billions of dollars. California’s taxpayers deserve to hear the truth on this and other issues, and as Controller, I will make sure they do.