California’s Six Figure Pension Club Has More Than 20,000 Members Former county administrator made $340K in 2015, as CalPERS taxpayer-backed debt climbed to $139 billion.

Eric Boehm

If public service truly is a sacrifice, then join me in shedding a tear for the 20,900 public workers in California who pulled down more than $100,000 in retirement benefits during 2015.

Thanks to Transparent California, a project of the Nevada Policy Research Group, you can now check out the retirement benefits for the more than 625,000 people who drew a pension last year from the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS.

Leading the way for 2015 was Michael Johnson. The former Solano County administrator received a $388,407 pension last year. There are some payouts for 2015 that exceeded Johnson’s because they included one-time settlements, but Transparent California considers his pension to be the richest in the state because it’s the highest annual payment.