Voters have little meaningful check on the ability of the California teachers unions (and, more brazenly, public safety unions, and also state employees general

Voters have little meaningful check on the ability of the California teachers unions (and, more brazenly, public safety unions, and also state employees generally) to unilaterally award themselves extraordinarily expensive compensation schemes. This is particularly true with regards to pensions, since $X0 billion dollar future outlays are routinely described as "minor adjustments to administrative procedures" and often not subject to the discipline of the ballot at all. For example, consider a one-line alteration to a statewide contract for teachers, changing the calculation for defined-benefit pensions from being based off of "the average of the highest 3 years of salary in a career" to "the average of the highest 3 years of salary in a career for careers of less than 25 years, or the highest single year of salary for careers of 25 or more years." That doesn't look like "The teachers just asked for $50 billion in extra pensions", does it? But that's exactly what happened. (If you're unsure of why there's a difference between the two contracts, read up on "pension spiking", which is theft under the cover of law that is an institutional reality for California public employees since "everybody is doing it.")