And be careful where you wave your wand. Illinois pensions are very underfunded while California pensions are not even close to as bad, we just have a much larger denominator.

Also, the rate of funding in California is set by the employer (the city / county, etc) and not the state, the union, or the unionized employee. The pension organizations (CalPERS and CalSTERS) have unreasonable rates of return projected in the system (7.5% annual last I heard) and the employers, not the state, are on the hook if those pensions are underfunded due to that high rate of anticipated compounded interest.

Stockton went bankrupt soon after the 1999 bubble burst because there was no possible way they could make that level of anticipated returns in 2000-2001 (in addition to other bad investments the city made).

> I don't like the idea of public unions because they can essentially bleed taxpayers dry. Private sector unions can bleed companies dry just the same. GM had negotiated itself into a corner pre-2008 and was less than 60 days from bankruptcy if not for US Government intervention (which helped them renegotiate their labor contracts). You can argue that a city in bankruptcy can't shed its pension liabilities the same way a company in bankruptcy can, but it's heavily dependent on the state law and the contracts.

The problem isn't that "they can essentially bleed taxpayers dry". They problems are that government jobs are largely undesirable for high-performing employees (with a few notable exceptions) and that government union jobs in the states you named mandate union dues by law. The latter was challenged at the SCOTUS during the Scalia absence[1].

[1] http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/friedrichs-v-cali...

Here in Maine, we either don't have a teachers union, or it is not a problematic cancer like it is in California and New York, and we still have problems firing toxic teachers that have actively harmed students.