County pension fund hit hard

The stock market crisis has battered Los Angeles County's public-employee pension plan so badly that taxpayers may have to pay an additional $500million a year by 2011 to prop up the system, according to a report by the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. Troy Anderson in the Daily News.

The county's general fund contributed $756 million last year to the system, but that is expected to rise to $1.28 billion by 2011 because of steep drops in stock market valuations.

The new findings follow years in which, critics say, public-employee unions in California were granted lucrative pension enhancements for their members.