David Crane, writing in the Huffington Post, has written a column most readers of this blog probably would not ordinarily see. But they should. He has succinctly explained the extent of California's disastrous management of pension obligations, and how it has created a $200-300 billion debt.  That makes the state's whopping general obligation debt look trivial.

During the current state budget crisis we've heard a lot about "kicking the can down the road." Of course, everyone knows what that phrase means in the traditional sense -- to put off" -- but not everyone understands what it means in a fiscal sense.
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On September 10, 1999, the California State Legislature promised tens of billions of dollars of future pension payments to government employees, but kicked to the future the funding of those promises. The legislation -- the equivalent of racking up credit card debt without the ability or a plan to pay it back -- became law, and the money was never set aside.
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This year alone California must contribute $3 billion to meet past pension promises -- $3 billion that otherwise could've gone to those programs. And those costs will just rise from here.
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California has kicked that can into a $200-300 billion obligation that grows every year that it's kicked down the road again. That's three to five times the amount of our general obligation bonds, and just as real of an obligation.
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one of the sad ironies of today's state budget debate is that some of the same politicians who are outraged at the plan to cut expenditures in order to close today's deficit voted in 1999 for that bill that retroactively and prospectively boosted pension promises, the effect of which was to issue billions of dollars of new  bligations that can only be paid by -- you guessed it -- taking money from the very programs they're outraged now about cutting.