Matt Mahan

Well, what that has allowed us to do because of the legal limitations that you've mentioned is, and I'm not saying it's perfect,

but this is just legally and politically what we were able to get to is the best outcome we were able to get is that we're on a long glide path of paying off all of the unfunded liabilities for the tier one employees, all of those older employees.

It's a 20,

year process.

By the early 2040s, San Jose will have cleared the debt.

Our general fund's going to be flush.

We're going to be increasing staffing and service levels.

And you'll start to feel that here much sooner.

We are actually roughly at peak cost for unfunded liabilities today because we took the medicine.

And now we'll start that slow glide path where each year there'll be a little more room in our general fund because we've actually bit the bullet and took this on.

Like, where's this money going?

Part of what we've done is something we talked about earlier, which is we have increased our pay for public sector employees and our pension obligations and post-retirement health benefits at a faster rate than we could actually afford.

And we haven't been honest with ourselves about that.

Part of where the money's gone though is really just a sprawling bureaucracy that when we, in good years, have more money, we create new programs, we add headcount.

The state's population has stayed flat over the last six years.

Spending is up 75%, as you point out,

And headcount in state employees is up, I believe, over 20%.

So we're adding more state workers.

We're pouring more money into public programs that aren't starting from the premise of what is the outcome we need and how do we most efficiently get there?

I mean, it's time for California to...